At Prospect Dentistry, our patients’ health and wellbeing is our primary concern. Consequently, to offer the best dental care, we will always produce some waste and use resources, which unfortunately results in negatively impacting our surrounding environment. Therefore, we have decided to offset the ecological footprint of Prospect Dentistry in an attempt to be an environmentally-neutral business. This is in no way reflected in our fee structure, with Prospect Dentistry bearing full costs of the offset rather than passing it on to our patients.
An ecological footprint goes beyond simply a carbon footprint, as it takes into account all of the natural resources (energy, land and water) needed to sustain our lifestyles and businesses. However, estimating such a footprint for a dental company is not an easy task, with the first systematic attempt across the globe to quantify the carbon emissions of a dental service only published four years ago[1], while no studies have attempted to quantify or even estimate the ecological footprint of dental practices. However, to estimate the ecological footprint, we can assume that it is about double the carbon footprint[2].
We offset our ecological footprint by making a financial contribution to Bio·R (www.bior.org.au/your-ecological-footprint/), a South Australian-based not-for-profit organisation that reconstructs habitat for biodiversity. To our knowledge, we are the first dental practice in Australia to offset our ecological footprint, and the first business that has signed up to offset its ecological footprint withBio·R. We look forward to continuing to improve the green aspects of our business and offsetting our ecological footprint withBio·R.
[1] Duane, B., et al. “Taking a bite out of Scotland’s dental carbon emissions in the transition to a low carbon future.” Public health 126.9 (2012): 770-777.
[2] WWF (World Wide Fund For Nature), Living Planet Report (2014): pp. 180.