How Green Dentistry Can Help Saving Our Environment
More of us are changing towards a more environmental conscious way of thinking every day – let it be selective household waste sorting, green products or simply replacing plastic bags to paper or some other material. ‘Untouched’ industries realised this evolving habit and started to apply green solutions on their own businesses. So it happened to dentistry too.
In this article we are focusing on what is green dentistry, how and why is it ‘green enough’ and hit the four key areas that are considered fundamentals.
Defining Green Dentistry
Green dentistry is focusing on reducing the ecological footprint of dental practices in a sophisticated way that requires advanced, sometimes even green, technology solutions – be as simple as the choice of dental materials or X-ray methods. In addition, it also advocates wellness and recreational activities. This way it is not only less negative impact on our planet but an experience that can be remembered – and in a positive way!
So how does eco-dentistry aids green efforts? Here are four simple ways to demonstrate how green dentistry, in the perspective of dental practices, can make a change.
#1 Key Area of Green Dentistry: Reduce Waste and Pollution
It is massive how much waste and pollution is generated by a single dental practice. Sterilisation chemicals, bibs and wraps are amongst the most polluting items in a dental practice and the total waste can be significantly reduced if they are replaced with recyclable products.
Alongside with the above, securely separating mercury (one of the ingredients of amalgam fillings) would cause less strain to the environment – major ratio of the mercury ending up at wastewater treatment facilities comes from dental offices.
Traditional X-ray generates lead foils that could last as long as 2000 years and picked up by plants ending up in our food system. It is estimated that a vacuum system in a typical dental office can use more than 1300 litres of water - a day.
#2 Key Area of Green Dentistry: Saves Water and Energy
New products and materials are at the heart of saving water and energy consumption. Dry vacuum suction system helps dental practices to save much of our precious water. We can also contribute our planet if we are turning off the water while we are washing our teeth. There are a lot of other possibilities and one of our blog posts is covering just that.
#3 Key Area of Green Dentistry: Advanced Technology
Recent innovations in dentistry are taking the environmental effect into account, so not even we get a better quality care faster but we also doing much better to our planet.
Digital technologies are one of the key concepts that innovations are taking advantage from. They offer early diagnosis, from which preventive therapies help wellness-oriented people to avoid any major dental work in the future. Three innovation changed the face of today’s dentistry a lot:
- Digital X-rays, that expose people to 90% less radiation
- Steam Sterilization, so no toxic chemicals are used, and
- CAD/CAM Technology that makes dental products (like crowns) in less than an hour. (see other article)
#4 Key Area of Green Dentistry: Wellness Orientation
There is a constantly growing community who are making efforts towards a lifestyle that is devoted to their physical well-being as well as the ‘wellness’ of the planet. They seek green solutions that has a lasting effect in their own lifestyle and the environment too.
Sources:
www.ecodentistry.org
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ecological_footprint
Further reading:
http://www.fastcompany.com/1577439/open-wide-here-come-the-green-dentists
http://www.ecodentistry.org/resource/resmgr/docs/eco-friendly_dentistry_jcda.pdf
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