The green dental office
Our dental office is striving to produce less waste and have eco-friendly products. Most dental products are not recyclable because they are considered medical waste. We have had to create our own environmental products and love the challenge of trying to limit ourselves to one bag of trash per day. Finding these items to help keep our footprint small has inspired the whole staff to be creative.
Items that we use to reduce waste are biodegradable cups, seventh generation cleaning materials, recycled paper products, and an energy efficient washer and dryer. We use cloth to replace a lot of the plastic products that we have used in the past. Even our disinfectant is biodegradable and low odor as not to upset the balance for our patients that are chemically sensitive.
As for our front desk, recycled paper is used as much as possible. All documents are shredded and put into our recycling bin too. We put all our cardboard and even our lunch containers to the curb every week.
We are currently experimenting with autoclaveable saliva ejectors to rid our practice of another plastic item that we cannot recycle. Our future hope is to add solar panels to our roof. Reducing our impact on the earth is a goal our staff has enjoyed and will continue to be a focus of the practice.
