Dentsply Sirona is committed to driving sustainability internally and enabling the industry to advance with confidence towards a more sustainable future. Three years ago, the company launched its sustainability strategy, ‘Beyond: Taking action for a brighter world’, to positively contribute to environmental, social, and governance goals.
Dentsply Sirona, the world’s largest manufacturer of professional dental products and technologies, published its third sustainability report in September, highlighting that the company has continued to successfully take action to drive sustainability internally as well as within the dental industry. The 2022 sustainability report was launched at Dentsply Sirona World Las Vegas, the company’s annual flagship clinical education event for the dental industry.
Erania Brackett, Dentsply Sirona’s senior vice president, orthodontic aligner solutions and customer experience, and head of sustainability, said, “I’m pleased that in 2022 we once again demonstrated our commitment to sustainability and made solid progress against all our goals, be they environmental, social, or governance related. In fact, we are now in the process of setting our next set of goals to supersede the 2025 goals we have met ahead of time – reducing our Scope 1 and 2 Green House Gas emission intensity and water withdrawal intensity by 15 per cent.
“For me, a special highlight of the past year has been the launch of our Sustainability Educational Curriculum. It is our response to the need for more knowledge expressed by a large number of dentists in our global sustainability study. The curriculum is available online on DS Academy and aims to help empower dental professionals around the world with the knowledge they need to drive sustainability within their practices and labs.”
Selected 2022 highlights from environmental, social, and governance goals
Dentsply Sirona’s sustainability strategy is built on three pillars of action:
- Healthy planet – striving to mitigate the environmental impact of the company’s operations.
- Healthy smiles – improving oral health globally, supporting customers, and fostering a diverse, equitable, and inclusive Company culture.
- Healthy business – maintaining and building trusted and responsible relationships with all stakeholders by establishing sustainable and safe practices across the business.
Healthy Planet
In 2022, Dentsply Sirona continued to reduce its Scope 1 and 2 Green House Gas emissions, water withdrawal, and total waste, in line with its strategy and targets. The company has conducted energy and waste audits across several sites globally and is putting measures in place, such as solar panels at certain manufacturing sites, to further reduce on-site energy consumption and waste.
Dentsply Sirona is increasingly using and developing digital tools and solutions to become a more sustainable business. DS Core, Dentsply Sirona’s digital cloud-based platform, operates on the Google Cloud Platform, which is powered by 100 per cent renewable energy.
Dentsply Sirona is also taking action to improve the sustainability of packaging materials associated with its products. This includes the use of more sustainable and recyclable packaging options, such as replacing plastic bubble wrap and foam with paper, switching to commonly recycled plastics, and reducing the size of packaging boxes.
Healthy Smiles
Dentsply Sirona enabled and empowered 5.4m healthy smiles in 2022. The company has now reached more than 11.2m smiles – nearly half of the 25m smiles Dentsply Sirona aims to reach by 2025. To contribute to driving better access to oral healthcare globally, Dentsply Sirona has continued to support Smile Train to advance cleft care. Since 2021, the Company has supported more than 2,700 cleft surgeries and completed donations in cash and in-kind of over $1m.
Dentsply Sirona and Smile Train have also entered a three-way partnership with the FDI World Dental Federation to develop a first-of-its-kind set of protocols for digital cleft treatment with the aim of increasing quality and access to oral care for patients with cleft around the world. The global digital treatment protocols were finalised and launched in 2023.
In 2022, Dentsply Sirona also made progress towards its goal to achieve gender parity by 2025. Additionally, 55 per cent of global hires in 2022 were diverse[1].
The Company provided more than 7,000 clinical education and training courses across 75 countries in 2022, with over 416,000 clinical education course registrations from dentists, technicians, hygienists, dental assistants, and students.
Healthy Business
Dentsply Sirona has achieved gender pay parity in the US, its largest market, for professional managerial levels and is working diligently to close the small remaining international gap by 2025.
Simon Campion, president and chief executive officer of Dentsply Sirona, said, “The reason we continue to make great strides in our sustainability ambitions for the third year running lies in our culture of unity combined with an unwavering focus on providing superior solutions for patient and customer care and our unwavering determination to build a more sustainable business “With sustainability principles in our hearts and minds, we will continue to drive transformative innovations as well as cooperation across our industry to make a positive impact on the lives and health of millions of patients and the planet on which they live.