Sustainability in dentistry

Have you ever thought about how many single use wipes are used in a dental practice? Every time you wipe down the surgery and place one in the bin, how is it disposed of? How many do you think you use in one year? There are several practices who have self-calculated that they used and disposed of over 20,000 single use wipes in one year!

In the October 2021 issue of Dental Nursing I touched on how dental nurses could help with sustainability within their dental practice. Has anyone made any changes?

Making decontamination sustainable

Think about all the different chemicals that are used every day in a dental practice – hand sanitiser, disinfectant surface wipes, impression soak, enzyme chemicals into the ultrasonic, waterline chemicals to flush through the chairs... These often come in plastic containers and take up a lot of storage space too. Think about how much plastic is used to hold all those different materials and chemicals. Next time your practice has its stock order arrive, have a look at how much plastic packaging there is in this one order.