Forget Birkenstocks. Forget patchouli oil. Forget the long hair, laid back, hippie images you have in your head. forget all the stereotypes you’ve heard about going green. As it turns out, “tree huggers” are pretty savvy businesspeople.
Even as businesses in numerous other industries work to enhance their green credibility, eco-friendly dentistry is moving at a slower pace, in part because major misconceptions persist, the biggest being that going green is just too expensive.
The truth is, eco-friendly dentistry can actually help drive profits, drive business and drive innovation.
Driving profit
It was 10 years after Dr. Doug Halloran joined his father’s Fresno-based practice that Paul Hawken’s The Ecology of Commerce inspired him to consider dentistry’s impact on the environment. In 2008, he had the chance to remodel the practice and, as he put it, “take it up a notch” by incorporating green principles. Now, less than two years later, he is already seeing a return on investment.
“Going green does require some up-front costs, but this should be viewed as a marathon, not a sprint. This is a dynamic trend where things are constantly shifting,” he said. “Up-front costs are not going to be inexpensive, but you will make it back in the long run.”
The main area in which Dr. Halloran has seen ROI is in his supply bill. Disposable items are priced low, but because they are purchased in bulk, costs can add up. In switching to reusable items such cloth headcovers, cloth patient bibs and stainless steel suction tips, he has eliminated several costly bills.
Wendy St. Cyr, RDHBS, a professional educator who lectures on eco-friendly dentistry topics, agrees that going green can be a financial benefit instead of a burden.
“A central part of my presentation is to help dissolve the myth that green is more expensive,” she said. “One way to manage the cost is to realize this isn’t something you do all at once. I think the best way to approach it is to come out of that three-hour lecture with three things you can do: Make one change for yourself, one thing for your practice and one for the planet. To me, that seems reasonable.”
When it does come down to concern over up-front costs—and for many, it does—companies such as PureLife hope to help ease the transition. PureLife is a dental supply company founded on a vision of bringing cleaner, more socially responsible values to the dental industry. But being environmentally conscious is just one of three pillars for the organization; the other two are competitive pricing and customer service. It’s that approach that, PureLife President, Omar Midani, believes is the key to the company’s success.
“We’ve experienced faster growth than we ever dreamed of. I think the environmental angle helps,” he said.
Midani and Pure Life CEO Rodney Hanoon, acknowledge that a supplier’s ability to order larger volumes of product makes a huge difference in terms of pricing and demand still isn’t where it needs to be to drive prices down for every product. To realistically address this challenge, PureLife takes a three-step approach.
“First,” Midani said, “for every product, whether it’s green or not, we work with third parties to compute the carbon footprint for that product. We calculate what damage is done through packaging and shipping and then we figure out how much we need to donate to environmental causes to offset the carbon emissions. This is something we can do for every product. Second, there are green products out there that are not priced out. They may be slightly more expensive, but we seek out the best prices and make those available. Third, we are helping push manufacturers we work with to go more green. We’ve been able to get people to switch to recyclable packaging to a manufacturing line that uses biofuel. In many cases, we absorb the added cost so that our customers don’t feel the impact.”
One major sticking point with Midani and Hanoon is waste, an issue that can be addressed with just a few simple steps. The ADA actually recommends use of amalgam separators as a best practice for handling mercury waste.
“Unfortunately, there is no financial ROI on an amalgam separator. It will cost, at most, $1,000 up front and then $200 to $300 a year after that,” Midani explained. “What we can do is help subsidize the cost of that amalgam separator as well as the resulting waste management services. We make it as cheap as we can to help accelerate the adoption rate of this equipment.”
To achieve financial success the focus can’t be just cost-saving, but driving additional business.
