NHS aims to reduce carbon emissions in dentistry
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- Published: Tuesday, 14 August 2018 07:36
- Written by News Editor
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Public Health England has issued a report on the carbon footprint of 17 of the most common dental procedures. The highest proportion of these emissions is caused by travel, followed by procurement, energy, nitrous oxide, waste and water. As a start the NHS is urging dentists to try to reduce the amount of travelling by patients and staff.
Public Health England has acknowledged that to be able to protect and improve the nation’s health and wellbeing now and for the future it is vital to improve sustainability and reduce carbon emissions. To achieve the scale of carbon reductions the UK government and NHS have committed to 34% by 2020 and over 80% by 2050.
The aim of this report is to calculate and analyse the carbon footprint of 17 of the most common dental procedures, including both high volume and resource intensive treatments, and to identify types of service which are responsible for large amounts of greenhouse gas emissions.
As a first step the carbon emissions of NHS dental services in England associated with patient travel, staff commuting, business travel, procurement, gas and electricity use, waste disposal, water use and nitrous oxide release were calculated. Once the total greenhouse gas emissions were estimated.
The highest proportion of these emissions is caused by travel, followed by procurement, energy, nitrous oxide, waste and water. To improve the sustainability of NHS dental services and reduce the travel related carbon emissions, service configuration could be reviewed to try to reduce the amount of travelling by patients and staff.
Most dentists already plan treatment to reduce the number of visits needed and further implementation of NICE guidance on the interval between courses of treatment might help (while being considerate of patient choice.) To be able to tackle dental procurement, which is the second highest contributor to the greenhouse gas emissions, detailed research into the carbon emissions of dental products is required.
Full report at: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/carbon-modelling-within-dentistry-towards-a-sustainable-future
How will they do that? Ensure dentists only work within penny-farthing distance of the practice? Make all the staff live over the shop? I can help right now by not turning up for work.
Reducing Bureaucracy reduces CO2 and hot air ideas....
Given that it is often central bureaucracy and unevidenced impositions that worsens CO2 emissions & costs for Dental Practices, I find this 'initiative' somewhat ironic and indeed, it seems to be a thinly veiled attempt to push for the 2 yearly recall in NHS Dentistry, which is also NOT evidenced-based of course.So just two examples of many:
1. HTM 01-05; it's non-evidenced imposition must have double CO2 output of dental practices overnight !! The massive rise in disposables and worse AWDs use huge amounts of electricity, cost a lot to make and even more to maintain and fix; some practices even needed to install 30amp supply so excessive is their energy consumption!
2. Labwork (and other products) done in China due to NHS funding limitations - it only goes to China to avoid environmental costs imposed here, yet pollutants get dumped into the same environment! Then products shipped from the other side of the WORLD :o
So start with the worst first - cut NHS Bureaucratic folly!
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