ZerOctober
Celebrate your sustainability achievements every year!
ZerOctober is the veterinary profession’s annual month of sustainable action, celebration and collaboration, sharing your success with your team, clients and colleagues.
Review-Rejoice-Reset
Every October veterinary teams review their sustainability progress for the year, rejoice by celebrating success with your team, clients and colleagues, then reset with new goals for the year ahead.
ZerOctober is open to everyone in the profession. The easiest way to get involved is to nominate your practice or someone from your team for a sustainability award.
For the more ambitious, choose one of the sustainability activities (listed below) that benefits your practice and your team, so they look forward to ZerOctober every year.
Advanced practices measure their carbon footprint and share the benefits of their sustainability activities with their colleagues.
Enter a sustainability award – the easiest way to start
Any practice can enter for a sustainability award and go into the draw to win a $500 prize.
Most practices are doing at least one thing towards sustainability – so take a photo (make it fun!), tell us your story (make it creative), send it to us and you are in it to win it!
For each award, we’d love to see photos you’re comfortable with us sharing too. Entries close October 23rd, with winners announced mid-November. Email us at [email protected] for more info!
ZerOctober Sustainability Awards 2026
Outstanding Individual Effort Award – $500
Nominate someone in your practice who has been an inspiration to your team and clients promoting sustainability?
Sponsored by CVS Vets.
Sustainable Practice Award – $500
Celebrating clinics leading the way in sustainability action to reduce the impact of all types of waste in practice, particularly carbon pollution, and promoting achievements to your team or clients.
Sponsored by Royal Canin.
Innovation Award – $500
Highlighting creative, practical or fun solutions to reduce waste or emissions and make it interesting for your team or clients. Have you created a poster for your team, organised an event or competition for your team or simply changed to a less disposable product?
Be creative with your entry submission!!
Sponsored by GapOnly.
Student Prize – $500
The most inspirational and valuable contribution to promoting sustainability in the veterinary profession.
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Beat the UK Vets! International Carbon GIG Challenge
Measure your Gas, Isoflurane and Grid electricity (GIG) and share the results with AVEA. The UK vets had 19 practices measure their carbon footprint. If we get 20 practices to measure GIG then your practice goes into the draw to win $500, sponsored by GreenPay.
Sustainable Pet Pic
Win $600 worth of Royal Canin** pet food.
Set up a photo with your pet that includes anything to do with sustainability and make it fun.
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How to enter
Send your entry with brief details (Award category, brief description and photos in jpeg) to [email protected] by Friday 23rd October.
TERMS AND CONDITIONS
— Judging panel will be nominated by representatives of the Australian Veterinary Environmental Alliance (AVEA) and the decision will be final. Winners will be chosen based on the appropriate merits of the entry.
— Student prize applicants must be enrolled in a veterinary science or veterinary nursing course during 2026.
— It is a condition of entry that photographs will be available for publicity purposes in accordance with AVEA privacy policy.
— Award winners will be announced at the ZerOctober online Masterclass Tuesday October 27th.
**The $600 Sustainable Pet Pic prize is based on the current RRP of the Royal Canin product and cannot be exchanged for cash or services. Royal Canin will contact the winner and arrange for the food to be sent out to a provided delivery address.
Popular activities that benefit your team
Run an e-waste collection for your team and the clinic
Everyone has e-waste accumulating at home and we know how quickly it accumulates around the clinic.
Here’s how an e-waste collection works:
- Contact Medcycle or Greenbox, to find out what items they can collect
- Set up collection boxes at your clinic for each type of waste (cables, screens, phones, etc.)
- Allow 2 weeks for everyone in the team to bring in their e-waste and add it to the clinic e-waste
- Take photos for clinic socials to share the experience with your clients — make sure to include photos of team members having fun sorting e-waste
- Enter this activity for one of the ZerOctober Sustainability Awards!
Join the ZerOctober Masterclass
Tue Oct 27th 7pm-8pm (AEDT) online
- Sustainability awards announced
- Sustainable anaesthesia (sponsored by Zoetis)
- ‘Analgesia or euthanasia’ – triage in extreme weather emergency
Measure and reduce your carbon footprint to really make a difference
The easiest way to look at your carbon footprint is to measure your G.I.G. — Grid electricity, Isoflurane and natural Gas.
Measuring these three important sources of veterinary carbon pollution gives your practice a practical starting point for reducing pollution and the associated financial benefits.
We are happy to walk you through the process. Email [email protected] for more info.
Join the international Carbon Challenge
In 2025, our UK colleagues Vet Sustain had 19 practices measure their carbon footprint. Let’s try to beat them with at least 20 Australian practices in 2026!
Do you have a creative idea to encourage sustainability in your practice?
Got your own ideas for a ZerOctober activity? Go for it!
A simple way to turn a good idea into an activity that gets results is to use our T.I.C. strategy: Team, Impact, Client.
Team: How will your team benefit? Who will be involved? Have they been given the time and resources to make it happen? Can you make it collaborative, rewarding or fun?
Impact: What will actually change? Can you measure the waste reduction or another result from the activity? A tangible outcome gives your team something to work towards — and something to celebrate afterwards.
Client: How can you bring your clients and colleagues into it? Share what you’re doing with clients, invite them to participate where appropriate, and connect with colleagues, suppliers and other practices to share ideas and solve problems.
A good ZerOctober activity gets your team involved, creates a measurable impact and gives other people a reason to join in.
And if it works particularly well, don’t forget to nominate it for one of our $500 sustainability awards.
AVEA thanks our ZerOctober Sponsors
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