Dentsply Sirona Strives for a Healthy Planet
We have always taken our role as an environmental steward seriously because a healthy planet is fundamental to our future. As a global leader in manufacturing dental products and technologies, we continuously seek to identify solutions to minimise the environmental impact of our operations and conserve resources.
For Dentsply Sirona, a healthy planet is one where greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions are reduced, resources and water consumption are managed sustainably, waste is minimised, and pollution is mitigated at every opportunity.
We remain committed to creating sustainable working environments by ensuring our facilities and offices are energy efficient and implementing robust recycling and waste management practices. In terms of sustainable packaging, we continued to optimise the materials we use for product packaging, with the aim to minimise waste and help develop a circular supply chain.
We strive to embed sustainable practices beyond our own operations and encourage collaboration, which is why we became a founding member of the FDI World Dental Federation’s landmark Sustainability in Dentistry initiative in 2021. In 2023, we collaborated with the FDI World Dental Federation to develop the Sustainability in Dentistry Massive Open Online Course (“MOOC”). This is a dedicated course created to help dentists, dental teams, and students understand the impact of oral healthcare on the environment and utilise evidence-based dentistry to improve their patients’ oral health in an environmentally conscious way.
Dentsply Sirona’s Strategic Environmental Priorities
We set out four ambitious Healthy Planet strategic priorities and targets. We are pleased that we are on track to meet our Scope 1 and 2 emission intensity and water withdrawal intensity reduction goals, and we are encouraged by the solid progress we are making against our goals. We are in the process of finalising our sustainability executional roadmap and conducting a global energy, waste, and water use audit. This audit will inform new targets that look beyond 2025, and we will be able to share these soon.
2021 is the second year we are reporting in alignment with the TCFD recommendations and the SASB standards. This is in line with our commitment to incorporate climate-related issues into our strategic and financial planning processes, and to report the positive progress transparently and consistently we make each year.
In 2021 we completed our first CDP questionnaire and received an overall “C” score, which is in line with the average performance for both Medical Equipment and Supplies sector and North America overall.
As we progress our sustainability strategy, announced in September 2020, we will continue to engage with the CDP and demonstrate the critical actions we are taking to combat climate change and strive to become a leader in our industry. Our long-term targets are being established as part of the sustainability executional roadmap we are developing, and we look forward to sharing this publicly to further demonstrate our climate strategy in action.
Reducing emissions is key to our environmental strategy and we understand the importance of transitioning to a low carbon economy. We set intermediate targets to reduce the intensity of our cope 1 and 2 GHG emissions by at least 15% by 2025, and we are pleased to report that we have already met this goal. In 2023 our absolute Scope 1 and 2 GHG emissions decreased by an absolute value basis of 47% compared with our 2019 baseline measurement.
We are now working to develop and report our Scope 3 GHG emissions by valuating the carbon impact from our entire value chain, which includes suppliers, manufacturers, and distributors.
In addition to that, we focus on reducing energy use and the associated emissions by using more renewable energy sources. Especially our manufacturing sites are actively engaged in collecting data and we are in the process of establishing site-based measures to reduce their impact. This results in 13 of our global sites now sourcing renewable energy, with nine of these sites using 100% renewable electrical energy.
We are always looking for innovative ways to enhance the durability, safety, and sustainability of our products’ lifecycles. We ensure that every Dentsply Sirona product is biosafe and our Safety Data Sheets outline all our safety policies and procedures. All our products meet regulatory standards, including the European Union’s Restriction of Hazardous Substances Directive (“RoHSD”).
We also follow the Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment (“WEEE”) standards that mandate waste and recycling practices when our products come to the end of their lifecycle.
Packaging is essential for the protection of our products. However, in a world with increasing sustainability expectations and regulations, our packaging needs to deliver much more than protection and promotion for our products. In 2024, we established a Sustainable Packaging Team and they are in the process of implementing sustainable packaging design guidelines for primary, secondary, tertiary and logistics packaging, supported by a roadmap that sets key targets and milestones for the next 10 years.
Water stewardship remains a crucial element of our environmental strategy and we are working with our regional teams to implement processes and initiatives that reduce our water intake and improve our water withdrawal and discharge tracking.
By creating closed loop and water quenching systems and installing self-closing taps our water withdrawal decreased by 6% in 2023 compared with 2022. We are encouraged by this reduction and are proud to share that our water withdrawal intensity (cubic metres/$M Net Sales) also decreased by 7% compared with 2022 and by 28% compared with our baseline measurement in 2019.
We strive to identify and implement best practices in waste management, because we understand that treating waste sustainably relies on a circular economy – meaning we need to prioritise the recycling and reusing of products and materials over disposal.
As part of our sustainability executional roadmap, we are developing a global waste reduction strategy that will support the achievement of our short-term goal of reducing our total waste by at least 15% by 2025, as well as set out long-term waste management ambitions beyond 2025.
In 2023, the amount of waste generated in metric tonnes across our operations decreased by 17% compared with 2022. We also reduced the amount of solid non-hazardous waste (metric tonnes) generated by 17%.
Exploring Our Other Sustainability Pillars
