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.
“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%,” said Erania Brackett, Dentsply Sirona’s senior vice president, orthodontic aligner solutions & customer experience, and head of sustainability. “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 its efforts to reduce Scope 1 and 2 Greenhouse Gas emissions, water withdrawal, and total waste, aligning with its established strategy and targets. The Company conducted energy and waste audits across multiple global sites and implemented measures, such as installing solar panels at specific manufacturing sites, to further curtail on-site energy consumption and waste.
Dentsply Sirona is increasingly utilizing and developing digital tools and solutions to advance its sustainability efforts. DS Core, the company’s digital cloud-based platform, operates on the Google Cloud Platform, which is powered by 100% renewable energy.
Additionally, Dentsply Sirona is taking steps to enhance the sustainability of packaging materials associated with its products. This includes adopting more sustainable and recyclable packaging options, such as replacing plastic bubble wrap and foam with paper, transitioning to commonly recycled plastics, and reducing the size of packaging boxes.
Healthy Smiles
In 2022, Dentsply Sirona enabled and empowered 5.4 million healthy smiles, bringing the total to more than 11.2 million smiles – nearly half of the 25 million smiles the company aims to achieve by 2025. To further improve global access to oral healthcare, Dentsply Sirona continued its support of Smile Train in advancing cleft care. Since 2021, the company has facilitated over 2,700 cleft surgeries and contributed donations, both in cash and in-kind, totaling over US$1 million.
Dentsply Sirona and Smile Train have also joined forces with the FDI World Dental Federation in a three-way partnership to develop pioneering protocols for digital cleft treatment. The objective is to enhance the quality and accessibility of oral care for cleft patients worldwide. These global digital treatment protocols were finalized and launched in 2023.
In 2022, Dentsply Sirona also made significant strides towards achieving gender parity by 2025. Additionally, 55% of global hires in 2022 were from diverse backgrounds.
The company delivered more than 7,000 clinical education and training courses across 75 countries in 2022, with over 416,000 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 positions. The company is actively working to close the remaining small international gap by 2025.
“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,” said Simon Campion, president and chief executive officer, Dentsply Sirona. “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.”
The 2022 Dentsply Sirona Sustainability Report is available for download on the website.
- Diverse is defined as all global employees who self-identify as female, or people of color in the US.
About Dentsply Sirona
Dentsply Sirona is the world’s largest manufacturer of professional dental products and technologies, with over a century of innovation and service to the dental industry and patients worldwide. Dentsply Sirona develops, manufactures, and markets a comprehensive solutions offering including dental and oral health products as well as other consumable medical devices under a strong portfolio of world class brands.
Dentsply Sirona’s products provide innovative, high-quality and effective solutions to advance patient care and deliver better and safer dental care.
Dentsply Sirona’s headquarter is located in Charlotte, North Carolina. The company’s shares are listed in the United States on NASDAQ under the symbol XRAY.
Visit www.dentsplysirona.com for more information about Dentsply Sirona and its products.
