At Woodgreen, we’re proud to be doing our bit to protect the environment. It’s a responsibility we take seriously in everything we do – minimising the impact of our services and helping to shape a better future for pets and their people.
Our teams work tirelessly to provide the best possible support services, but we always consider what this means for the environment. That’s why we invest in facilities which are environmentally friendly and regularly review our sustainability efforts – looking at ways we can be better.
Here are some of the steps we have already taken to reduce our environmental impact.
We have a state-of-the-art wind turbine at our centre in Cambridgeshire. You may have seen it on The Dog House, Channel 4’s documentary series which is filmed at Woodgreen.
Our wind turbine produces enough electricity to serve the needs of our centre, with any excess being exported to the National Grid. Put simply, this is good news for the environment. It also saves us lots of money, which we can use to help more pets in need.
Last year, we used 774,804 kWh of electricity generated from our wind turbine and solar panels.
(at a 2 kWh average)
(at 0.02 kWh per boil)
(equivalent to the annual emissions of over 29 cars)
We have an onsite rainwater harvesting tank which allows us to collect rainwater and reuse it for cleaning various areas of our centre, including the dog kennels.
Water is collected from gutters, stored and then used for different purposes – keeping our centre spick and span for our pets. And it saves the charity on average around £900 a month on water!
Across our whole site, we recycle as much as possible – from cardboard, wood and metal to plastic and paper. We currently need to send some of our waste to landfill sites, but we’re working towards taking care of all of it ourselves. In fact, we already use lots for our cats and small pets’ accommodation. They love making hidey holes or beds out of boxes and shredded paper!
Our site is home to a reed bed – also known as a constructed wetland, which basically ‘scrubs’ water that we can reuse for different purposes. This area of our site also happens to be a great space for wildlife to thrive!
Our veterinary surgery roof is fitted with solar panels which contribute to the energy supplied to the building, as well as heating up water, which we can reuse. This is one of the busiest areas of our centre, with thousands of life-saving operations and procedures carried out yearly, so it needs a lot of energy to keep it running.
We’ve committed to converting all our onsite lighting to LED by 2028. We’re also planning to install motion sensors that will mean lights are only switched on when movement is sensed.
Our teams spend a lot of time supporting pets and people in the community, and we rely on cars to reach as many of them as possible. Approximately 50% of our vehicles are pure electric (EV) and we’re aiming to go fully electric in the near future.
Our commitment to sustainability goes beyond the charity’s main centre in Cambridgeshire. We also have charity shops across the east of England which sell pre-loved goods including clothes, books, toys and other items.