Derwent Valley Vets acknowledges that our veterinary activities, services, and operations have an impact on the environment and have identified key impacts related to our business that contribute to our environment and carbon footprint. Through the implementation of this sustainability policy, we will encourage wide reaching participation, working to reduce these impacts, whilst upholding the highest standards of animal health, welfare, and clinical care for our patients.

We have identified our key areas that contribute to our environmental and carbon footprint:

• Consumption of electricity, gas, water and other fuels
• Use of anaesthetic gases
• Waste generation and disposal
• Use of raw materials, including prescribed drugs and medicines
• Procured goods and services with their own environmental impact
• Transport emissions

Derwent Valley Vets is committed to reducing these, other impacts and to the continual improvement of our environmental performance and goals by:

• Reuse and recycle everything we are able to improve our waste and recycling policy
• Reduce the use of anaesthetic gasses
• Minimise the use of paper in the practice by communicating with our clients digitally where possible
• We will seek to reduce the amount of energy used at the practice as much as possible
• Increase team awareness and training
• We will only use licensed and appropriate organisations to dispose of waste
• Cleaning materials used at the practice will be as environmentally friendly as possible
• Complying with all applicable environmental regulations
• Continually improve and monitor our environmental performance
• Ensure drugs are disposed of correctly, including any surplus medicines clients no longer have a requirement for

The policy will be reviewed annually as part of the Derwent Valley Vets environment management plan.