One of the UK’s leading animal hospitals has been congratulated on its remarkable environmental advances in one of the fastest times recorded for a veterinary practice. Linnaeus-owned Paragon Veterinary Referrals in Wakefield, West Yorkshire, has taken just six months to earn an Investors in the Environment (iiE) bronze-level accreditation.
iiE is a nationwide initiative that encourages firms to transform their working practices to introduce more environmentally-friendly, cleaner and more sustainable methods and systems.
To achieve its award, Paragon has introduced a host of measures including reducing single-use items, replacing disposable theatre hats with fabric versions, using reusable surgical gowns for some procedures, introducing washable kennel liners and moving to paper-free HR processes.
The practice has also adjusted the way it feeds patients to reduce the amount of food thrown away, as well as introducing food waste collections.
It has also added recycling bins to clinical areas and removed personal bins from offices to force people to recycle. All lights have been replaced with LEDs where possible and the practice has used “Paws to Switch Off” stickers to remind people to switch off lights and computers when not in use.
Paragon’s success has earned high praise from Ellie West, environmental sustainability lead at Linnaeus. She said: “The team at Paragon are quite the overachievers for managing to achieve bronze accreditation within just six months of joining. That is our record in Linnaeus, so many congratulations. This is so well deserved!”
Sophie Adamantos, clinical director at Paragon, said: “This award is just the start. Next, we want silver and ultimately, we’ll be going for the green award, the highest achievement of them all. We’ve worked hard to comply with environmental regulations and the expectations of the public and our customers.
“We’ve monitored our key resource usage and implemented conservation techniques to achieve our targets. This includes a new waste and recycling policy and a sustainable procurement policy.
“Most importantly, we’ve circulated our environmental policy to all our employees, ensured they’ve been provided with training to increase awareness of environmental matters and encouraged them to identify new areas where we can make a difference.”
Paragon’s multi-disciplinary care includes anaesthesia and analgesia, cardiology, dermatology, diagnostic imaging, internal medicine, neurology, oncology, ophthalmology, orthopaedics and soft tissue surgery.
