Every day sustainability becomes a more immediate concern. Increasingly, we must think about the environment in every aspect of our lives – and dentistry is no exception.

As dental professionals, sustainability can feel like an unattainable goal, as strict medical hygiene standards must be adhered to, making environmentally harmful single-use and plastic products a necessity. But this is why it’s all the more important for dental practices to reduce environmental impact wherever they can, which is exactly what Go Practice Green is here to help with.

Working out how to make sustainable changes without compromising medical standards, patient care and satisfaction, and your bottom line, can be a daunting task. It’s difficult to do it alone; so don’t do it alone.

Go Practice Green: what is it?

Go Practice Green is an online, self-paced subscription programme to help you achieve a more sustainable dental practice. As you make sustainable changes, you will be rewarded with certifications that you can showcase to patients.

To create achievable goals, Go Practice Green is separated into bronze, silver, and gold levels, so that you can get certifications and accolades as you go, making your progress feel real and constant, instead of distant and unattainable. The achievements you need for each level are also broken down into easy to understand, actionable goals.

The benefits?

• A greener dental practice: Go Practice Green takes you from small steps to large leaps for sustainability, designed with business in mind. Created to work at your own pace and around your busy schedule, you can go green without adding too much to your workload.
• An engaged team: Striving for environmental change is a great way to unify and motivate your team, and employees are more likely to stay long-term at a business that shares their values. You may even find you have staff passionate about sustainability, ready to spearhead the movement.
• Recognition with patients: People care about the environment, and being able to showcase that you do too can increase patient loyalty, and even attract environmentally conscious patients.

What about the costs?

Sadly, there is often a cost to going green. As they currently lack the demand required to drive down costs, environmentally conscientious products are often more expensive, and changing business models or taking larger steps such as installing solar panels will also have short term costs. However, consumers are changing.

Increasingly, especially among Millennials and Gen Z, people care who they do business with. People are becoming more likely to favour businesses with good environmental and CSR practices.

Did you know:

• 77% of customers take social and environmental credentials into account when deciding where to make purchases.[1]
• 76% of consumers have stated that they would stop doing business with a company that has poor environmental policies, or that treats staff poorly.[2]
• 51% of employees are less interested in working with companies who aren’t actively addressing social and environmental sustainability issues.[3]

Those are not small numbers. For all you know, it might be not going green that is truly costing you.

Furthermore, you may find that becoming more environmentally conscious has the knock-on effect of reducing your energy bills, as you adopt sustainable habits.

As a Henry Schein customer, you can get a discount on your Go Practice Green subscription.

Get started today

Either sustainability is the future, or there isn’t one. Join the movement now.

[1] https://www.ucem.ac.uk/whats-happening/articles/a-sustainability-business-case/#:~:text=Research%20from%20PwC%20found%20that,where%20to%20make%20a%20purchase

[2] https://www.pwc.com/us/en/services/consulting/library/consumer-intelligence-series/consumer-and-employee-esg-expectations.html

[3] https://www.capgemini.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/07/20-06_9880_Sustainability-in-CPR_Final_Web-1.pdf