Meet Laura Binnie
Small Animal Vet & Sustainability Lead at Paragon Veterinary Group, BVM&S, BSc, MRCVS
I am a small animal general practice vet, I graduated from Edinburgh in 2010. Veterinary was my second degree after completing a zoology degree, specialising in parasitology. I live with my husband and young family in rural Cumbria.
I have worked at Paragon Vets since 2011. Paragon is an independent rural mixed practice and I have been leading our Green Group and sustainability project since 2020 when we began our sustainability ‘journey’. We have a very supportive Board and a brilliant and engaged Green Group.
We were immensely proud to be the first practice to have been awarded the Environmental Sustainability Award by the Royal College of Veterinary Surgeons (RCVS), achieving ‘Outstanding’ for both our Dalston and Newbiggin practices.
Furthermore, we have been awarded Silver Accreditation by Investors in the Environment (iiE) with an overall score of 91%. This not only validates our efforts but puts us well on track towards our goal of achieving the highest Green Accreditation later this year.
Paragon has worked hard and been fortunate to have been awarded a few sustainability awards in the last year. We won the iiE Natural Environment Champion award and were finalists for the Best Newcomer award as well as being the Webinar Vet’s Greenest Veterinary Practice (20+ employees).
Plus on a more local community level, we were nominated for and became finalists for the Most Green/Ethical Business award in the In-Cumbria Business Awards. On a personal level, I’m delighted to have been chosen as the Webinar Vet’s Greenest Vet Personality of the Year 2024.
My passion lies in working on solutions to all aspects of veterinary practice and helping make us a more environmentally sustainable profession, one we can all be proud of being part of. I am fascinated by the natural environment and saddened by the biodiversity loss we face. The scale of this is quite startling.
And while Paragon is very proactive about doing what we can to improve our local biodiversity, we realise we have more to do to make a bigger difference. One of my favourite things to do is to engage with our local schools to help educate the next generation on how to protect wildlife and what more we can do for our environment.
For about 2 years I have been a core member of the Vet Sustain Greener Veterinary Practice working group, where we have discussions regarding sustainability ‘hot topics’, start new initiatives and work together to develop resources and templates for Vet Sustain. This is a wonderful group with whom to collaborate and to feel supported by, where we feel we can really make a difference.
More recently I have been appointed as a sustainability support lead to the XLVets group, a membership of 65 independent practices. I aim to draw on my experience at Paragon and Vet Sustain to explore different solutions to reducing our members’ carbon emissions and to help them start out on their sustainability journeys. I want to help people realise they don’t have to do everything all at once or perfectly. As part of this, I write monthly articles for the member’s newsletter and deliver carbon literacy training and carbon calculator benchmarking sessions. I have also written a Guide to Sustainability for the members to use in their own practices.
Find out more – Sustainability Profile: Paragon Vets – Our Sustainability Success Story So Far
The article was originally posted in The Cube magazine, June 2024 issue. Click here to read the magazine.
