Green Impact Dentistry

Introducing Green Impact Dentistry

Green Impact is a sustainability accreditation scheme with an audit and awards element. It’s an international programme, recognised by UNESCO as a global laureate for education for sustainable development. It runs in many different sectors and organisations, including a dedicated dentistry programme which launched nationwide in 2023. Through Green Impact, dental practices can access a supported online framework for creating change, and can choose to work towards a Bronze, Silver or Gold award, evidencing their commitment to being a responsible healthcare business.

An online toolkit, co-designed by sustainability and dentistry experts, provides a step-by-step guide to sustainability quality improvements. Participating practices will gain access to a host of resources and support to help them assess, verify and monitor their impact and progress. At the end of the year, we’ll be providing students with IEMA-approved training to become auditors, training them to visit practices to review their work. We’ll then hold an awards event to celebrate the programme’s achievements.

We anticipate multiple benefits for participating practices, including:

• Creation of a network of sustainability champions to share good practice and ideas both within and outside your region.
• Dental teams can learn more about sustainability issues and are given the agency to take positive action.
• Staff can build new professional and personal skills and undertake workplace CPD around sustainability.
• Practices are recognised for the positive actions they are doing at a local and national level.
• Positive PR amongst policymakers, patients etc.
• Completed actions can reduce carbon, reduce waste, save energy, save water and lead to financial savings.
• Meaningfully supporting ICB Green Plans, Greener NHS Net Zero, and UK Climate Change Act targets.

Any dental practice in England, Scotland or Northern Ireland can sign-up to take part. By signing up, your practice will have free access to the toolkit, support, and will be eligible for an award at the end of the year. You can register your practice at any time, and our next deadline for awards submission is 31st October 2024. You can contact us for registration information or to find out more.

If you are based in Wales, you can take part in the Greener Primary Care Wales framework, coordinated by Public Health Wales. 

Expanding Green Impact Dentistry in 2024, and beyond

In March 2024, we were delighted to receive funding from SBRI Healthcare through the ‘Delivering a Net Zero NHS for a Healthier Future’ competition to build on this exciting work and grow our reach and impact in primary care. The outputs of the funding will include a new carbon saving calculator for the Green Impact Dentistry toolkit and a free-to-access reporting dashboard for Integrated Care Boards (ICBs) to help monitor activity within an ICB. We are currently seeking ICBs to trial the new regional reporting dashboard so please contact us if you’d like to be involved. This new functionality will give you an overview of the primary care practices who are taking part in your region, as well as any participating NHS Trusts, so you can gather good practice, connect with your teams, and capture important data.

• Contact
• Students Organising for Sustainability (SOS-UK)