Introduce Recycling

As a dental practice we have huge amounts of potential recycling.

Just think about the arrival of your weekly or monthly stock order as one example.

How much cardboard and plastic arrives just with this?

Oral health products – encourage your patients to bring their used electric toothbrush heads or retainers, these can all be recycled through different schemes, one example being Teracycle.

Your local council can organise recycling bins for plastic, cardboard and general rubbish.

Encourage your team to recycle at lunchtime. Milk cartons, wrapping from their food.

Have different bins in the staff room for cardboard, paper, plastic and food items.

Go paper free wherever possible.  Reuse paper that has been printed on incorrectly (as long as it has not got any patient information on it) can be used as scrap paper for notes instead of sticky ‘post-it notes’ make them into pads for note-making. Wherever possible proof reading documents several times so you know they are absolutely correct before printing and only print if absolutely necessary, then try and print on both sides of each page.

Shredded document paper? Do you recycle all this or is it placed in a bin bag and put out with the rubbish?

Batteries can all be recycled; many supermarkets have a container to place reused batteries in and if you google recycling batteries there are many companies that will send you out a free recycle box.

Why are batteries bad for the environment?

As batteries corrode, their chemicals soak into soil and contaminate groundwater and surface water. Our ecosystems, which contain thousands of aquatic plants and animals, are compromised when filled with battery chemicals. … Lithium batteries can cause landfill fires that can smolder for many years.

Ink cartridges quite often come with a postage bag to send back old cartridges.

300 million inkjets sold in Europe per year

Only 15% of all inkjets sold are remanufactured

45 million cartridges end up in landfill in the UK

Cartridges can take up to 1000 years to decompose

The lifespan of ink cartridges can be optimised by reusing & recycling them as many times as possible

Recycling plastic takes 88% less energy than making plastic from raw materials

www.recycle4charity.co.uk is a free service for recycling ink cartridges.

Contact your local council to organise your recycling bins for business use.

It is simply a case of making your team aware these options are in place.

You are invited to leave your thoughts, ideas, recommendations, etc. below in the comments section.

Claire Frisby

The Remote Dental Nurse