Edinburgh Napier University

  The greatest challenges we currently face as a society are the twin, interconnected threats of climate change and biodiversity loss. They will jeopardise our future if we go about business as usual. This chapter focuses on more sustainable construction of dental practices, highlighting the responsibility of healthcare practitioners to integrate the principles of sustainability into their professional life.

Here we encourage the use and development of more sustainable materials and technologies and a wider awareness and appreciation of the surrounding environments. We will focus on methods of dental practice construction that promote sustainability and improve the wider habitat around the dental practice, benefiting staff, patients and the local ecosystem.

We will also discuss adaptation measures to climate change needed for both new builds and retrofits, by considering building plans, materials chosen and use of available surrounding greenspace. These efforts often go hand in hand with wider sustainability practices. Dental practices with greenspace can help to support local biodiversity through simple and sustainable measures that can also help to mitigate against increasingly common extreme weather events.

Healthcare professionals worldwide have an obligation and a unique opportunity to monitor the environmental impact of day-to-day living, improve the built environment and undertake research that promotes positive change. Improvements to urban environments can promote health benefits, greatly improve safety and enrich the human experience.