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W Squared provides retained accounting services and payroll services to Belmont Animal Hospital.
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April 6, 2009
Pets and planet win at eco-friendly Belmont Animal Hospital
By Chris Echegaray
Nashville, TN - At the new Belmont Animal Hospital, the building is constructed from recycled materials and the office is mainly paperless.
Its owner, Dr. Baker Eadie, said he wanted to meet two goals simultaneously: caring for pets and the environment.
Eadie and his longtime friend, Dr. Malcolm Sewell, purchased the building at 3206 Belmont Blvd. last year with the plan to minimize the environmental impact of a new veterinary practice. The two grew up in the Green Hills area, both attended the University of Tennessee College of Veterinary Medicine and for years dreamed of such an animal hospital.
"We wanted a community feel and wanted to add a positive influence," Eadie said. "We love this neighborhood and wanted a place where people could walk over here. That minimizes the carbon footprint. We have more recycling bins than most places."
The hospital, which opens April 13, is a 4,800-square-foot space with an additional 12,000 unused square feet in the back of the building. The vets used nontoxic paint on the walls, and the floors are marmoleum, made with natural raw materials. Three separate heating zones allow them to save energy by not heating empty spaces.
Even the digital X-ray machine has far less radiation than the regular machine, and the pets have beds made with 100 percent waste-free material.
As people become more conscious about the environment, green construction projects in homes and businesses are becoming more common, said Nashville's Grant Dorris, owner of GreenChoice. The company gives detailed analysis on the energy efficiency of any building and also renovates it for environmental purposes.
"When you have more environmentally friendly products, in a broad sense, you are improving the indoor environmental quality," Dorris said. "It's a little more costly. But it's naturally perceived that it's more expensive than it is."
Even beds are 'green'
Word quickly spread about the "green" animal hospital, reaching its neighbors at Belmont University.
Teresa Van Hatten-Granath, associate professor of photography and digital imaging at the school, has made more than two dozen pet beds and has given them to Eadie.
The professor is known as the Green Bag Lady because, so far, she's donated 3,322 fabric bags on the promise that people will not use paper or plastic when they go shopping. Friends and businesses started donating reams of fabric, and Hatten-Granath found she had a lot of leftover fabric once the bags were made. So she started making pet beds out of fabric, including organic material.
"Before you know it, I have people giving me all sorts of fabric, including upholstery," said Hatten-Granath, whose project has received national attention on CNN and other media outlets. "Then, the dog beds at the animal hospital was a perfect fit for this."
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W Squared provides retained accounting services and payroll services to Belmont Animal Hospital.