ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Vet. Sci.
Sec. Veterinary Humanities and Social Sciences
This article is part of the Research TopicTransforming Veterinary Medicine: Digital Tools and AI as Path to Sustainable Animal CareView all 7 articles
Environmental Sustainability in Veterinary Clinics: Best Practices for the United States and Canada
Provisionally accepted
- 1Colorado State University, Fort Collins, United States
- 2University of Guelph Ontario Veterinary College, Guelph, Canada
Select one of your emails
You have multiple emails registered with Frontiers:
Notify me on publication
Please enter your email address:
If you already have an account, please login
You don't have a Frontiers account ? You can register here
Veterinary professionals in the United States and Canada are increasingly seeking ways to reduce the environmental impacts of clinical practice, reflecting a broader commitment within the profession to sustainability. While environmental sustainability frameworks are well established in human healthcare, equivalent resources for veterinary clinical practice in North America remain limited. This study aimed to develop evidence-based best practices for enhancing environmental sustainability in veterinary clinics in the United States and Canada. We conducted a grey literature review of open-access resources in veterinary medicine and human healthcare to identify explicit sustainability actions. Extracted actions were synthesized and reviewed by a panel of seven subject matter experts through a two-round modified Delphi process. Experts evaluated each action for implementation effort and environmental impact and provided qualitative feedback. The final set comprised 199 actions, organized into 14 thematic categories. Experts emphasized the importance of leadership engagement, team empowerment, and balancing high-impact, resource-intensive interventions with low-effort "quick wins" to build momentum. Priority areas included energy efficiency, waste reduction (particularly anesthetic gas management), sustainable procurement, and community engagement. The resulting framework provides a flexible, regionally relevant roadmap that clinics can adapt to their context, offering practical entry points for immediate action alongside strategies for long-term change. This resource can support veterinary teams, educators, and industry stakeholders in embedding sustainability into clinical practice, contributing to improved planetary and animal health.
Keywords: sustainability, Veterinary Medicine, clinical practice, Sustainable care, Environmental impact
Received: 21 Aug 2025; Accepted: 10 Nov 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Kern-Allely, Scott, Clow and Duncan. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Caroline Kern-Allely, caroline.kern-allely@colostate.edu
Disclaimer: All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.