When it comes to promoting sustainability in the animal health industry, people often think about what they can physically see when they walk into their veterinary practice. While biodegradable pill bottles and digital communications play important roles in reducing the physical impact on the environment, what goes on behind the scenes is just as important as what plays out in the clinic.
At first glance, logistics is not the flashiest step in terms of creating healthier futures for animals, but in terms of improving practice workflows and prioritizing sustainability, it is critical. The supply chain supporting animal health is a complex, multistep process. Nonetheless, a great number of incremental steps means an equal number of opportunities to insert efficiency and green practices into that process. One of the most pivotal is order consolidation.
This article is sponsored by MWI Animal Health.
According to the EPA, 28% of 2021 U.S. greenhouse gas emissions came from transportation. As such, at MWI Animal Health, it was one of the first parts of our supply chain we examined to enhance our operational sustainability. We quickly realized that consolidated orders would reduce the number of shipments, which in turn would reduce our environmental impact.
Automatic order consolidation combines sustainability with efficiency. As part of the process and aligned with our customers’ requests, multiple orders placed during a single week by a veterinary clinic or other customer are reconciled into a single order, invoice and delivery day each week. This not only greatly reduces trucks on the road (reducing transportation-related emissions), but also reduces veterinary practice inefficiencies and stressors.
Add to that, as part of our order consolidation process, our team utilizes fewer boxes, which in turn would reduce our environmental impact. It is a simple equation with a big benefit: fewer boxes = less cardboard = fewer trees being cut down.
Transformative Change
Many veterinary practices are small, local businesses. For them, efficiency is their absolute priority. For a small practice in an industry confronted by staffing shortages, time is of the essence – and time spent managing paperwork or unloading boxes is time they could spend caring for animals. Order consolidation helps to improve operational efficiency—by simplifying paperwork, reducing the frequency and expediting the process of unloading and stocking deliveries, and preventing the need for small practices to break down and dispose of large amounts of packaging waste. This lessens not just the environmental impact, but also the impact on veterinary practices and on the individual people who work there.
In collaboration with one of our largest veterinary practice clients, we arranged a new ordering system where orders/deliveries were consolidated from four to five days a week down to two to three days a week. We are not only impressed by the results – we are staggered by them.
Its impact has been, quite simply, transformative. Whereas previously this large customer received an estimated 478,755 containers for our products, following the introduction of order consolidation, between May 2020 and March 2021, that figure fell to 387,240 consolidated containers – a reduction of more than 91,000. This 19% reduction in packaging saved 146,424 pounds of cardboard.
The reduction in cardboard translates to a large environmental benefit: approximately 1,245 trees were saved from felling. Across the entire order process, this 19% reduction means 315,161 pounds of carbon dioxide were not emitted, equal to the output of 354,724 passenger vehicle miles.
Still, we did not stop there. When it comes to prioritizing sustainability, each opportunity should not be examined in a vacuum. Due to our role as a distributor, MWI Animal Health is uniquely positioned to help encourage sustainability both up and down the supply chain, working with manufacturers and veterinary practices. Even within our own operations, we treat efforts including order consolidation as one step of a multi-part journey, prioritizing both practice efficiency and sustainability at each junction.
Through a central distribution process that enables manufacturers to ship to a single regional MWI Animal Health facility, rather than each individual distribution center, we create efficiency by packing trailers more densely with inventory as they move throughout MWI’s distribution network.
Once product arrives at our distribution centers, we use “auto packers” – AI-driven packaging equipment – to pack individual customer orders in a way that automatically considers order size and weight to build an appropriately sized box around the order. This process not only reduces packaging waste, but also allows carriers to pack shipments more densely, ultimately reducing last mile environmental impacts and greenhouse gas emissions.
Changes at Every Level
The steps of our greener supply chain even extend through the front doors of the veterinary clinics we work with every day. In the UK market (and in progress in the US market), MWI’s electric delivery vans transport medications, supplies and more to customers with a reduced carbon footprint. They arrive in refillable supply totes that are delivered weekly and then picked up for reuse the following week – resulting in zero cardboard, Styrofoam and plastic waste. As the last step, digital communication platforms like AllyDVM’s PetPage® Patient Portal send out digital notifications – rather than paper mailers – to let pet owners know their medication is ready for pickup, reminding them about appointments, sharing important educational information from their veterinarian, and more, removing more physical waste from the equation.
Thus, we ensure that each practice ladders up with MWI’s other sustainability efforts. This creates a greener supply chain step by step – and a better world.
Despite our successes to date, we continue to prioritize sustainability. MWI Animal Health’s expanding efforts to promote sustainable practices in the supply chain are a direct response to manufacturers voicing sustainability ambitions of their own, as well as the expectations expressed by veterinary clinics. We recognize that companies want to do business with organizations that share their values, which is why it is important for us to be a leader in this space. A lot is said these days about the importance of sustainability, but we do not just talk the talk. Every day, we look for new ways to keep walking this walk on an ever-growing scale.
That is also part of why we prioritize transparency when it comes to our impact. As an environmentally responsible business, we report our sustainability progress as well as our emissions as part of our parent company Cencora’s annual ESG Report.
An Ongoing Commitment
When it comes to expanding our sustainably initiatives, it’s a ‘when’, not ‘if’. We know many opportunities remain where we can reduce or remove waste (in all its forms) from the process, be it physical waste or operational inefficiencies in our own and in our customers’ businesses. Still, that is part of the beauty of prioritizing sustainable practices – when it comes to waste and inefficiencies, reducing one helps to reduce the other.
At MWI Animal Health, we believe in a future where people everywhere are healthy and well, where animals and our planet can flourish and where our communities can thrive. Through order consolidation and the other sustainable practices we employ, every day we take a step closer to making that future today’s reality.
Discover more about how digital tools, like AllyDVM client engagement solutions, can increase your sustainability and practice efficiencies with automatically generated client reminders for appointments, refills, and more by visiting https://www.allydvm.com/solutions.