The impact we are having on our planet is something that seems to be gathering more and more attention, and rightly so. For too many years we’ve been living and working in a way that is simply unsustainable. We’re taking out more resources than we’re putting back and we’re putting out more greenhouse gases than we’re removing from the atmosphere. It’s a slippery slope that is unbelievably still getting worse, globally, rather than better.
Here in the UK, we are ahead of the curve in terms of reducing our carbon footprint, which means there really isn’t a better place to be, than right here, for reducing our own carbon footprint.
My wife and I took over at what was Grayes Dental Care in March 2022 and when we rebranded to Smiles in Tandem, we wanted to place sustainability at the very heart of what we do. We were aiming to provide first class dental treatment, in a way that doesn’t damage the planet, whilst maintaining the highest possible levels of care for our patients. A goal that we’re still very much striving towards today.
This is no easy task in a clinical healthcare environment where patient safety, rightly comes before everything else. From a safety perspective, much of the industry is heading towards single use items and we use a lot of packaging called steri-pouches that we use to store instruments after they’ve been through the sterilisation process.
So the question is, is it possible to become a net zero dental practice?
Short answer: Yes! We are one!
A year ago, I posted a blog What is sustainable dentistry? which gives a bit of an overview of where we were at then and how we were looking to reduce our carbon footprint. I also wrote that a business calling themselves net zero can be misleading! Truth be told, I still don’t like the term “net zero” as it’s easy to hide behind a huge carbon footprint and a real lack of consideration for the planet, simply by claiming to “offset” any CO2 emissions.
In the last couple of years we’ve made huge steps forward in reducing our carbon emissions. We’re still working on reducing them further of course, and we’re hoping to hit the IPCC’s target of a 50% reduction well before the deadline of 2030. Not only this, but we’re hoping to start inspiring other healthcare providers to do the same, something which I’ve already started doing, when I spoke at a local dental study group recently on our journey so far.
In theory, the first step on our journey should have been auditing our baseline carbon footprint. We’ve been working very closely with Zerobees who have set up a fabulous platform for dental practices to do just this, however this took a little time, mainly as we were piloting the dental platform for them. We didn’t want to waste any time before making some impactful changes, and so by the time our first cycle was complete, we’d already reduced our carbon footprint!
At the end of the 2022-23 year, we had a carbon footprint of 104 tCO2e (tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent - the widely used metric for measuring a carbon footprint which encapsulates all forms of emissions, not just CO2) for the year, which is equivalent to the carbon footprint of 60 cars on the road for a year in the UK. This became our benchmark from which we could set a target for our future reductions.
The target we’ve set ourselves is to reduce our footprint by 50% by 2030, at the latest.
We’ve made a lot of changes over the our journey, from switching to a renewable energy supplier, introducing and then improving our recycling systems, significantly reducing our clinical waste, reducing our emissions due to transport and speaking to our labs and suppliers about the importance of sustainability to us. There really is too much to cover everything we’ve done in one little blog, though I may well post some more blogs going forward on more specifics.
One of my favourite things we’ve done is our refer a friend scheme. For every new patient that joins us on recommendation from one of our existing patients, we plant a tree in the UK. The impact is more symbolic than a significant improvement on our end of year number crunching, but it’s wonderful to see our Forest of Smiles growing month by month.
We’ve also tried and failed with a few things along the way, including trying some reusable items instead of single use, which whilst according to the regulations, they’re ok to use, we felt they may end up compromising our levels of patient safety.
So much of what we’ve done is down to Lucy, our resident Eco-Ninja. Lucy is well known to all our patients, having been a dental nurse here for well over a decade. She jumped at the opportunity to become our sustainability champion within the practice.
Through the efforts Lucy and the whole team have been investing, we managed to reduce our carbon footprint to 67 tCO2e, a whopping 35% reduction!
Kirklees council recognised our achievements by awarding us the Business Recycling Hero award in 2023.
Not only this but we’ve now achieved the silver level on the World Dental Federation’s Sustainability in Dentistry award and we’re well on our way to getting gold. As well as the FDI awards, we've also been awarded Climate Leader status by Zerobees for our continued efforts in reducing our carbon footprint, our commitment to further reductions and our efforts in spreading the good word on why and how to reduce a carbon footprint.
Finally, in acknowledgement of the 67 tCO2e that we did generate last year, we have invested in a climate positive solution in the form of funding a project to avoid methane emissions from landfill sites. This will help remove 67 tCO2e from being emitted into the environment. Let’s be clear though, this is not an excuse for putting more carbon out there, but it’s our attempt to go some way towards mitigating our impact.
So, what’s next?
Well we’ve still got a long way to go to hit our target, but we’ve taken a huge chunk out of it. We’ve done the easy work, the next steps will involve further innovation in ways to reduce our impact. We want to continue to improve the utilisation of our facilities (making sure all our treatment rooms are full every day) and we’re looking into improvements we can make to the building to make it better insulated and to help us utilise the space we have.
And what can you do to help?
Travel contributes to 64% of an average dental practices carbon footprint. Nearly half of this is staff travelling to work, which is why we promote our team using public transport or walking to work, or electric vehicles when people have a bit further to go. The other half comes mostly from our patients travelling for their appointments.
This is why we place such an emphasis on prevention in your dental care. Not only does it mean less treatment for you, but less appointments and so less travel. You can also combine your appointments, so you have your dental health reviews and hygienist appointments at the same time, rather than making multiple visits.
We also want to take on more local patients, those people who live within walking distance of us. Choosing your local dental practice minimises your travel requirements and therefore your carbon footprint.
It still feels like we’re quite early in our journey to becoming more sustainable but it’s a moment to reflect and celebrate on how far we’ve come so far. A 35% reduction in carbon footprint in one year helping us to become net zero, multiple awards for our sustainability credentials and invitations to speak at dental events to share our journey. Let’s see what we can do with year two.
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