A life cycle analysis of the environmental impact of procurement, waste and water in the dental practice

Abstract

Background Health care is a significant contributor to climate change. Global pressure for a change towards a more sustainable way of providing dental health care has resulted in the creation of the Green Impact Toolkit, which is comprised of a list of suggested changes that dental practices can make to become more sustainable in a number of categories, such as procurement, waste and water.Aims To compare the effectiveness of changes suggested by the Green Impact Toolkit.Materials and methods A comparative life cycle assessment (LCA) was conducted using the Ecoinvent database v3.8 and these data were processed using OpenLCA v1.10.3 software.Results The carbon footprint per patient was significantly reduced after the recommendations were implemented. For instance, using water from a rainwater collection tank instead of the mains supply saved 30 g CO2eq (carbon dioxide equivalents) per patient, a 90% reduction in carbon footprint.Discussion This comparative LCA identified some effective changes which can be easily made by a dental practice. Nevertheless, some actions require some initial financial investment and may be difficult to implement in a busy modern dental practice setting.Conclusion The findings from this study can be used to guide dental practices to making choices which are more sustainable and eco-friendly in the future.