The art and science of sustainable dental practice

Do you know that dental practices have a significant amount of detrimental effect on the environment?

This is an era where we must think about passing the planet as we have seen and felt to our next generations!! As fantastic is the human development is, in the fascinating realm of dentistry, there is inarguably a need to transition to eco-friendly ways. In a philanthropic attempt to help our patients, dentists often use disposable equipment in their offices. There is immeasurable information out there about infection control and other safety protocols for dental offices, but little about the sustainable ways to do it. It can be challenging for the dental offices to stay abreast of the new advances as well as going towards a greener and safer environment for the patients.

Well, how do we keep the patients safe from cross contamination as well as protect the environment? A clear-cut clinical approach and plan to be followed by all the dental healthcare workers can remarkably improve the sustainability. Although it might look like dentistry and sustainability are too hard to be together, here are few ways to reduce the waste and make the practice eco-friendly.

- Conservation of electricity and water. This can be achieved by installation of motion sensors and LED lights. Also, reducing water force and keeping an eye on running water.

- Amalgam separators are crucial to any dental offices as it has been proved by many studies that dental offices are one of the leading causes of mercury contamination in the wastewater.

- Packable composite vials may be reused after disinfecting if we avoid using it intraorally. It is advised that the manufacturer should provide proper instructions for recycling the materials if they are used intra orally.

-Avoidance of single use products and making a habit use of re-usable products whenever possible. For example, sterilizable suctions, bibs, tray covers, sterilizable digital x-ray tabs, impression trays and so on.

- Reducing the use of plastic barrier wraps by maintaining proper asepsis.

- Autoclavable cloth pouches for sterilization cassettes or FDA approved bio-degradable pouches made food scratch. By doing so, a sole practice can prevent huge amounts of waste in less than a month.

- Use of bio-degradable nitrile gloves.

- Use of utility gloves for cleaning and sterilization instead of nitrile gloves.

- Economic inventory maintenance to prevent having dead stock

- Instrument sharpening is a great way to re-use the instruments. A lot of instruments in the dental office can sharpened and reused many number of times.

- Use of laundered lab coats instead of disposable lab coats.

- Use of emails instead of conventional paper mails.

- Re-use and recycle whenever possible, this can reduce the amount of waste in the environment.

- Rethink while sending all the waste into landfill because much of it can be recycled.

- Finally, placement of recycle bins in the operatories.

We can only talk about so many ways to conserve our environment and keep it safe for our patients. I hope this little attempt can allow the readers rethink, keeping the finances and their patient preferences in mind; have a collective approach of team members to accomplish it. Some patients who are interested can be educated to use greener oral health care products. Conversion to green dentistry can provide financial results with time.

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