A Kendal dental practice has seen their dedicated focus on environmental, community and client care recognised with a rare ‘Green Impact for Dentistry’ Gold Award 2024. Conducted by the education charity SOS-UK with backing from the NHS Healthier Futures Action Fund and Greener NHS, the highly-regarded programme challenges dental practices to incorporate accredited sustainability actions into their standard procedures.
Across 2024, Crossbank Dental Care, on Captain French Lane, completed 123 actions from a list of 167, putting them in the top percentile of practices in the country, only 26 of whom qualified for an award, and just 6 for a gold. But this is no recent conversion for the practice, who have been focussing on reducing their environmental impact across two decades, including switching to reusables, recyclable packaging, non-damaging materials, bulk purchasing, installing solar panels and an EV charging point.
Their 2024 initiatives included eliminating clinical waste and single-use plastics wherever possible and improving office admin recycling, down to repurposing non-confidential “scrap” paper into notebooks. Proving sustainability doesn’t stop at the front door, the practice also focussed on turning outside “overlooked land” into green space, together with hedgehog homes, bird feeders, bug hotels, a ‘Hotbin’ composter, and 2025 will see a vegetable patch intended to encourage less food miles into their lunches!
All this is a personal passion for Principal Dentist Neil Cooper and his wife and Director Bex, who attracted an online following for rolling up her sleeves and digging a wildlife pond as part of her “30 Days Wild” challenge last summer.
“While we’re all thrilled at achieving gold, even more so is its incredible validation that what we’re doing is meaningful and making a difference,” says Bex. “It’s also been really fun working as a team across the administrative and clinical areas of the practice to see what we can improve.”
They won’t be sitting on their newly-planted laurels, either, with plans already well under way for 2025, including continuing the clinic’s “Implant a Tree” programme in partnership with Cumbria Wildlife Trust, and a focus on making it easier for staff and patients to use public transport, cycling and walking to reach the clinic.
“It’s not ‘oh look at what we can do’, it’s about giving people the enthusiasm, knowledge and confidence that any small changes add up to big impacts,” says Bex. “We love the relationships we build up with our patients, community, local charities and schools, and we’re definitely looking to take that further this year. We’ve set ourselves a high bar, aiming for a second Green Impact for Dentistry Gold Award in 2025- but we like to think of it as Going for Green!”
