“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 greenhouse gas emission intensity and water withdrawal intensity by 15%,” said Erania Brackett, senior vice president of orthodontic aligner solutions and customer experience and head of sustainability at Dentsply Sirona.

Brackett continued: “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 the Dentsply Sirona 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 for environmental, social and governance goals

Dentsply Sirona’s sustainability strategy is built on three pillars of action: Healthy Planet, Healthy Smiles and Healthy Business.

The Healthy Planet pillar of action is about striving to mitigate the environmental impact of Dentsply Sirona’s operations, and the company in 2022 continued to reduce its Scope 1 and 2 greenhouse 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 increasingly using and developing digital tools and solutions in order to become a more sustainable business. Actions taken to improve the sustainability of packaging materials have included reducing the size of packaging, using more sustainable and recyclable options and switching to commonly recycled plastics.

The Healthy Smiles pillar involves improving global oral health, supporting customers and fostering a diverse, equitable company culture. In this area, the company is proud to report that it enabled and empowered 5.4 million healthy smiles in 2022 and has now reached more than 11.2 million smiles—nearly halfway to its goal of reaching 25 million smiles by 2025. The company has continued to support Smile Train to advance cleft care, having supported more than 2,700 cleft surgeries and provided donations in cash and in kind of over US$1 million. Together with Smile Train, Dentsply Sirona entered a partnership with FDI World Dental Federation to develop a first-of-its-kind set of protocols for digital cleft treatment, which were finalised and launched in 2023. The company in 2022 also made progress towards its goal of achieving gender parity by 2025, and 55% of global hires in 2022 identified as women or were people of colour. Dentsply Sirona also provided more than 7,000 clinical education and training courses across 75 countries in 2022, and there were over 416,000 clinical education course registrations by dentists, dental technicians, dental hygienists, dental assistants and dental students.

The Healthy Business pillar of action saw Dentsply Sirona achieve gender pay parity in the US for professional managerial levels, and the company is working diligently to close the small remaining 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 CEO of 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 company’s Sustainability Report 2022 is available for download here.

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