Greater Springfield Veterinary – winning with water and waste

Greater Springfield Veterinary is a large, independently owned, small animal veterinary service with three hospitals in Ipswich, QLD. They participated in the preliminary launch of our Climate Care Program with Dr Annaliese Johnson, a senior veterinarian appointed as their ‘Climate Champion’. Annaliese has been working together with the whole team to tackle sustainability in their clinics.

After completing the Water for Life module, the clinic has found a number of ways to reduce their water usage. They include:

  • Turning the taps off while scrubbing.
  • Adding flow restrictors to all their taps and fixing leaking taps.
  • Using the half flush on the toilet where possible.
  • Reducing the number of laundry loads each day by ensuring each load is full and reducing the amount of bedding we use. 
  • Distilling their own water to be used in the autoclave.
  • Using left over patient water etc for use in the garden. 

animal characters with title how do we save water at GS Vets?These small but significant changes have resulted in Greater Springfield Veterinary reducing their water usage by a whopping 278L per day across 2 of their locations, this is approximately a 30% reduction! Watch their Facebook video to learn more about their water saving activities!

After this amazing success, Greater Springfield Veterinary took on the task of reducing their waste through the No Time to Waste module. They started this process by conducting a waste audit which found that 67% (by weight) of the rubbish that they produced could be diverted from landfill by other waste management streams. They set about introducing 4 new waste streams:

  • co-mingled recycling;
  • food and garden organics;
  • products that could be recycled through Terracycle; and
  • stationary and batteries that could be recycled via local retailers.

All the staff have been really engaged with learning about these new waste streams. 

Recently, the staff repeated their waste audit and found that now only 30% of the waste in their rubbish bins could be diverted from landfill through other streams. We’re looking forward to seeing what progress they make next!


The team taking part in a waste audit of their clinic

 


To learn more about how to reduce your waste and water usage, register to participate in the Climate Care Program and take steps to become an environmentally sustainable clinic!