Peninsula Dental Social Enterprise CIC

Organisation Bio

Peninsula Dental Social Enterprise CIC was established in 2013 and is a wholly owned subsidiary of the University of Plymouth.

PDSE is responsible for running four Dental Education Facilities (DEFs) with two clinics in Plymouth (Devonport - on Damerel Close, next to the Cumberland Centre) and at Derriford (on the science park - just to the east of Derriford hospital). We also have clinics in Exeter and Truro.

The University of Plymouth's dental school students provide patient treatments while being supported by a team of qualified dentists and a dedicated staff team of dental nurses, hygiene therapists and other support staff.

Both the school and the clinics were established to tackle oral health inequalities in the South West, with a view to training dentists who stay in the region once qualified, treating patients in the teaching clinics who may not otherwise have access to care, and providing and promoting oral health education in the communities served.

PDSE works closely with local communities including schools, care homes and charitable organisations to promote and develop programmes for oral health education.

About our climate journey

Sustainability has been one of PDSE’s core organisational values for a number of years. As an organisation, we have always promoted small behavioural changes that support resource and energy efficiency in our clinics but our intensity of work (and commitment to) addressing environmental impacts in the last few years.

In 2024 & 2025 PDSE hired a dedicated Sustainability Manager who has been tasked with a range of measures, including: developing an environmental management system accredited to ISO14001, procuring rooftop PV and affordable EV charging for our sites, putting in place a EV pool vehicle, improving our annual environmental reporting and calculation of GHG emissions.

PDSE reported its organisational emissions in alignment with the all of the GHG Protocol’s reporting categories (less for ‘investments’). For the first time in October 2024 and our second report published in December 2025.

We have a busy year ahead. We are pressing on with developing our environmental management system and achieving accreditation to ISO14001. We are rolling out improved sub-metering across our estates to enhance energy efficiency and shed light on how we can most efficiently decarbonise heating, in particular, in the years to come. We are researching our clinical consumables consumption patterns and exploring ways to reduce associated impacts. We are supporting the university in empowering their dental students to go on to facilitate the transition to Sustainable dentistry in their onward careers. We are retrofitting with LED lighting, rolling out PV on 3 of our sites and ensuring our new practice, to open in Plymouth city centre at the start of 2026, is specified appropriately to ensure minimum impacts in both commissioning and operation (plus lots more!).

Our climate journey

COMMITTED TO NET ZERO?
CARBON FOOTPRINT CALCULATED?
CLIMATE ACTION PLAN WRITTEN?
MONITORING IMPACT YEARLY?
PLAN TO BE NET ZERO BY...?

2040


See our Climate Action plan

PDSE’s vision is to provide excellent primary dental care services to our communities, while providing the best clinical placement facilities
for dental students of any UK dental school.

Sustainability represents one of PDSE’s core organisational values. The Environmental Objectives set a clear determination of PDSE’s goals regarding its environmental performance and impacts. The objectives are a mark of commitment to PDSE’s ambition to protect the environment and for the prevention of pollution. PDSE will deliver on the intention of this policy through the continued development of our Environmental Management System - this system is structured and operated in alignment with the requirements of ISO14001:20151

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Biggest climate achievement to date

Commuting to work and patient travel is thought to represent around 60% of dentistry's emissions in the UK.

We don't think they're quite this high at PDSE but we have been targeting transport emissions over recent months with two recent wins we're pleased to get over the line:

We have rolled out affordable EV charging at our clinics - to help facilitate the transition to lower carbon motoring for our employees and patients who access sites by car.

We have procured an EV pool vehicle (a 'Buzz Cargo' van) which is being used by our Dental Outreach and Facilities teams to reduce emissions associated to visiting schools and transporting equipment from site to site.

Most difficult climate challenge faced

Two big challenges we're grappling with at the moment are:
1. Decarbonising heat - we have big boilers starting to approach end of life, for which we would love to replace with commercial heat pumps, but for which the capital costs associated to replacement with heat pumps (indicatively) are looking very challenging to get over the line. We are doing everything we can to better improve our understanding of heat requirements and optimise energy use in the interim - to ensure whatever system is specified in due course can be as efficiently sized (and cost effective!) as is possible, but it's certainly a live issue we're scratching heads on.
2. Clinical consumables - like most organisations, the majority of our emissions are understood to sit in Scope 3 - specifically on the purchasing of goods and services. Within this, we understand our procurement of clinical consumables is associated with very significant GHG and environmental impacts. We are keen to engage with these as effectively (and swiftly) as we can, but between restrictive clinical compliance requirements and a clinical product marketplace that is short in robustly appraised/evidence based product alternatives with reduced environmental impacts, we do not feel very empowered on where to turn and how best to address our impacts.

Best climate advice or tip for others

We're stronger together and a lot of people are working on the same problems. To achieve common goals we must not work in silos - time is too short. We have to be open and collaborative and challenge norms, where they do not align with the acuity of the crises faced.

Peninsula Dental Social Enterprise CIC posts & projects

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