Climate change is increasingly destabilising the planet, and the effects of this are starting to show even in the relatively stable, temperate UK climate. Veterinary professionals juggle many things day-to-day, and the profession is under intense pressure. It is not surprising that many feel overwhelmed by the climate crisis. However, there is a lot that can be done, and even actions that may feel small make a difference and have significant influence on others. Veterinary professionals must be mindful that working towards net zero – where a balance is achieved between the greenhouse gases released into the atmosphere with the amount that is removed – is the biggest way to positively impact animal welfare for many animals into the future, including domestic, farmed and wild.
If this balance can be achieved by 2050 or before, global warming is likely to be limited to the critical 1.5°C rise threshold, after which the climate will become very unstable and unpredictable, with potential for catastrophic weather events occurring frequently. This article will through some of the key areas where individuals can make a tangible difference and provide direction to support and further reading.
What can the individual do?
There are many behaviour changes individuals can adopt in their personal lives, to limit their impact on the planet and reduce green-house gas emissions. Easy and quick changes which are impactful include switching to a green energy tariff at home and switching to a greener pension plan. Behaviour changes that might require a little more effort but are also hugely beneficial include buying fewer new clothes, travelling less by car and plane and using public transport for more local trips. These changes are also more healthy and are likely to save money too, but it is important to recognise that making mindful choices is the key and perfection should not be the enemy of the good.
The author highly recommends Jen Gale's book on sustainable living (Gale, 2020), as it talks about pragmatic, sustainable lifestyle changes that are achievable and fun. Another impactful change is to eat less – and better – meat and animal products. If individuals choose to eat animal products, making sure they are only eating locally produced, high welfare meat, dairy and eggs and really valuing these products for special occasions is a great way to both support animal welfare and reduce their carbon footprint.
Vet Sustain also run carbon literacy courses for those who are keen to learn more about human impacts on the planet (see https://learn.vetsustain.org/collections).
What can be done in practices?
Not only will individual behaviours at home make a big difference, there is also a particularly good opportunity to help the planet through actions at work. Vet Sustain, the British Veterinary Association, the Society of Practicing Veterinary Surgeons and the British Veterinary Nursing Association together produced the ‘Greener Veterinary Practice Checklist’ (Figure 1), which highlights some of the most impactful things we can do to reduce our carbon footprints at work. There is a lot of support related to this to explain the themes in more depth, such as the webinar series from the British Veterinary Association, Vet Sustain and the Veterinary Defence Society in 2022 and Vet Sustain's Greener Veterinary Practice webinar series in 2024.
The Greener Veterinary Practice checklist.
One key way practices can reduce their emissions is through using resources more sustainably. This could include similar changes as those made in the home, such as switching to a green energy tariff or using LED motion-sensing lights rather than old halogen or traditional bulbs. Switching to paper-free management systems, saving water and ordering medicines and consumables weekly instead of daily will all help too.
Where new buildings are being designed or new equipment is being bought, considering their efficiency and carbon footprints is important, looking at impacts from ‘cradle-to-grave’. This takes into account their impacts of production, lifespan length and whether they can be recycled. Reducing, reusing and recycling waste is essential too, and reducing disposable consumables in the operating theatre can really help.
The medicines used by veterinarians can have some of the biggest impacts on the planet, including anaesthetic gases, which are potent greenhouse gases, and other drugs such as antibiotics and parasiticides. Eliminating the use of one of the worst greenhouse gases, nitrous oxide, must be done as soon as possible, and exploring low-flow systems and multimodal analgesia to reduce flow rates for other gases is also very helpful. Reducing parasiticide use is extremely important to protect biodiversity and limit the risks these potent chemicals pose to many species. Ensuring practices do not waste pharmaceuticals is critical, so good stock management is essential.
A great way to take stock of where a practice is in terms of its carbon footprint is to use a carbon calculator to obtain a baseline. Vet Sustain have designed the only bespoke carbon calculator for veterinary practices, and this is a great tool to use. Once there is a known starting point, measurements can be repeated over time and used to assess how a practice's carbon impact is reducing as new ways of working are implemented.
Many of the changes which can be made to make a practice more sustainable have additional benefits. Many reduce costs – including using power, water and consumables more responsibly – and many can improve animal welfare, such as using multi-modal analgesia and nerve blocks to reduce anaesthetic gas use. Furthermore, talking about sustainability and the efforts being made in a practice are not only a great way to aid staff retention – the British Veterinary Association's Voice surveys have shown that veterinary professionals care very deeply about this as a priority – but also will help to bond and engage clients. Practices have developed ideas such as greener outdoor spaces, bee-friendly gardens and other nature areas around their practices where clients can walk or sit on benches and relax during their vet visits, which have also helped with client retention and satisfaction.
Empowering the whole practice team is the best way to make impactful change – forming a green group is a great way to engage people. Even new staff members and newly-qualified veterinarians can start making changes and influencing people. Pitching the economic benefits of many of these changes can also help to get leadership and management on board, and it is likely that, as they see the team moral and commitment to these changes rise, they will be increasingly incentivised to implement more and more green wins.
For those interested in learning more about how to make a greener veterinary practice, Vet Sustain launched a new 35-hour CPD online course in April 2024, titled ‘A Sustainable Approach to Clinical Veterinary Practice’ (see https://learn.vetsustain.org/collections). This unique and brilliant course covers all of the elements in detail of what veterinary professionals can do to work more sustainably in practice, and is fantastic place to learn about this, implement change and help achieve net zero and a more sustainable future.
How can veterinary professionals influence their clients to be greener and reduce their pets' carbon pawprints?
Influencing clients and helping them to be more aware of their pets' carbon ‘pawprints’ and work to reduce these is a fantastic opportunity for the profession. A great starting point to help reduce carbon pawprints is thinking about the 5 Ps: preventative health, pet food, poo, parasiticides and practice health plans.
Preventative health
Probably the most impactful way the carbon pawprints of pets can be reduced is by promoting great animal welfare and focussing on preventative health. Ensuring pets are healthy will mean they need less medicines, anaesthetics, consumables and other resources throughout their lives. This is not only a win for the planet, but it achieves a core goal as a veterinarian in improving animal welfare. It is truly win-win, as this approach will also save clients' money while still bonding them to their veterinary practice, which is more and more important in this turbulent economic era.
Maybe emphasising the significant climate impacts of overweight pets, as well as the animal welfare impacts, will be another tool in the artillery against this debilitating condition.
Pet food
Promoting greener pet ownership through advising on the climate impacts of things that also impact animal welfare is a great place to start. For many years, the profession has encouraged owners to have lean pets of a healthy weight in order to maximise their welfare – despite this, it remains extremely challenging to get clients to feed their pets this way. Almost half of UK pets remain over-weight or obese, and veterinarians believe that the prevalence of obesity is on the rise (UK Pet Food, 2022). Maybe emphasising the significant climate impacts of overweight pets, as well as the animal welfare impacts, will be another tool in the artillery against this debilitating condition.
The carbon pawprint of pets is comprised predominantly of the food that pets eat and the origin of those foods. Depending on the type of food fed, the annual impacts of owning a cat are comparable to driving a small car, and for a medium-sized dog can be as high as driving two 4x4s (Vale and Vale, 2009). Pets fed on a raw, fresh or wet meat diet, especially one made of more ‘prime’ cuts, have dramatically higher carbon emissions than those fed on dry foods. Given the significant negative impacts of pet food production on the planet, ensuring that pets are not overfed is a win all around.
Poo
Another important piece of advice we can give to clients to help the planet is to advise them to always to pick up their pets' poo, as this can result in significant environmental contamination, as well as the other risks such as parasite spread or parasiticide impacts, if left to leach into the land.
Parasiticides
Research has emerged finding pharmaceutical agents in our waterways. This ranges from Prozac, capable of affecting the physiology and behaviour of starlings (Bean et al, 2014), to waterways downstream of Glastonbury showing concentrations of cocaine and ecstacy from upstream human urination (Aberg et al, 2022). There is also evidence finding products that are commonly used in small animal topical spot-on products in our waterways, including fipronil and the neonicotinoid imidacloprid (Perkins et al, 2021; Perkins et al, 2024).
Given the potential for widespread environmental contamination, and risks not only to non-target invertebrates but also to birds and mammals (Kindemba, 2009; Gibbons et al, 2014), veterinarians need to move away from blanket prophylactic prescribing of these drugs and towards a more risk-based approach (British Veterinary Association, 2021).
Veterinary teams deal with tricky dilemmas and a lack of perfect evidence on a daily basis, weighing up pros and cons of treatment options given the context of the individual animal, so are used to approaching complex issues in this way. Balancing the needs of the pet with the needs of people – in terms of compliance, affordability and zoonotic risks – and the needs of the planet is a skill that teams must continue to develop.
Talking to owners about the risks and benefits of parasiticides in all these areas, about that pet's individual risk, and prescribing or recommending parasiticides based on this risk is the best way forward. Avoiding topical spotons where pets regularly swim or are washed is also sensible, although recent research shows that these products commonly enter water-ways from activities as common as stroking pets then washing your hands (Perkins et al, 2024). Using single-ingredient products to target a particular parasite only is also beneficial, and datasheets should always be followed. The British Veterinary Association have produced practice and client guides to help navigate this difficult area.
It is likely, given the examples with other medicines and pharmacological agents, that many of the medicines used in practice will have some degree of impact on the ecosystem. Therefore, it remains a vital challenge to ensure that veterinarians continue to promote preventative healthcare education to their clients and the wider public to ensure they are using as few of these products as possible, whether they be antibiotics, parasiticides or other drugs.
Practice health plans
A great way to increase client bonding, ensure regular health checks and help clients manage costs is through practice health plans. The costs of these are often tied in with routine parasiticide treatment, as it was long believed this preventative approach was the right thing to do. With the biodiversity declines and the climate crisis now manifesting as the most critical issue the world is facing, and the one with the biggest consequences for animal and human welfare, veterinarians need to be creative and figure out how these can be restructured.
The author recommends centring these plans around preventative health, with individual consultations around preventative health as part of the health plan package and deriving revenue for these, instead of parasiticide products. Optimal weight, tooth brushing and neutering pros and cons in one consult, what to feed that pet as an individual in another, parasite management in another, and so forth could all be discussed. Nurses would be great members of the veterinarian-led team to provide the time, expertise and guidance that clients need one-to-one to explore some of these complex areas.
There is also evidence finding products that are commonly used in small animal topical spot-on products in our waterways.
Resources
Vet Sustain resources
Other resources
Conclusions
Veterinary professionals are uniquely placed to make impactful reductions in emissions at home, in practices and through advocacy work with clients, working together to achieve net zero. Remembering the significant animal welfare wins this will have can be a key motivator, and redesigning health plans is something green practices are already doing with high success.
Veterinarians have a duty of care beyond that of the patient, and carefully balancing the one health challenges of animal health, human health and planetary health is essential. As the climate crisis becomes even more urgent, the time for action is now – and small actions really do make a difference.