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 manages five sites where students from Peninsula Dental School deliver dental care to the public. This treatment is provided under the supervision of qualified dentists and supported by PDSE’s dedicated team of dental nurses, dental therapists, and support staff. In addition, PDSE’s own clinicians offer NHS dental services from these same facilities.

Located in Exeter, Plymouth, and Truro, these clinics play a vital role in tackling oral health inequalities by offering care to individuals who might otherwise struggle to access dental services and helping to train future dentists who may choose to remain in the region after qualifying.

Beyond clinical care, PDSE actively engages with local communities and organisations – including schools, care homes, and charities – to promote oral health and deliver tailored education programmes.

About our climate journey

Sustainability is one of PDSE’s core organisational values and is increasingly embedded in how we manage our facilities, procure goods and services, deliver clinical activity and plan for the future.

Over recent years we have significantly increased our understanding of the environmental impacts associated with delivering dental care. This has included improving the measurement and reporting of our greenhouse gas emissions and developing practical projects to reduce energy consumption, waste, travel emissions and the environmental impacts of the products we use.

We reported across our Scope 1, 2 and 3 greenhouse gas emissions for the first time in 2024, considering the relevant reporting categories of the GHG Protocol, and have continued to develop our environmental reporting since then.

Our focus has increasingly moved from understanding our impacts to delivering measurable reductions. Across our estate we have completed a transition to LED lighting, replacing more than 400 fittings and reducing annual electricity demand by approximately 50,000 kWh.

We have also installed 462 solar panels across our Devonport, Derriford and Exeter facilities. Together, these systems are expected to generate approximately 210 MWh of renewable electricity each year.

Other projects have included improving the operation of our decontamination facilities, introducing electric transport, providing EV charging, improving building controls and energy monitoring, reducing unnecessary single-use clinical items, reviewing the materials used in high-volume consumables, consolidating deliveries and improving waste services.

As a healthcare organisation, we recognise the important relationship between environmental sustainability and population health. Our approach is informed by the direction of the NHS's wider sustainability ambitions, including reducing carbon emissions from healthcare, improving resource efficiency, reducing reliance on single-use products where clinically appropriate, supporting more sustainable travel and addressing emissions associated with healthcare supply chains.

We will continue to improve our understanding of PDSE's environmental footprint and use this evidence to identify practical opportunities to reduce emissions and resource consumption while maintaining safe, effective and accessible dental care.

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

Sustainability represents one of PDSE’s core organisational values. Our environmental objectives provide a framework for improving our environmental performance and reducing the impacts associated with delivering dental care.

Our priorities include reducing greenhouse gas emissions; improving energy and resource efficiency across our estate; increasing the use of renewable energy; reducing waste and unnecessary consumption; considering environmental impacts when purchasing goods and services; supporting lower-carbon travel; and identifying opportunities to make clinical care more environmentally sustainable without compromising patient safety or quality.

We are particularly focused on areas where healthcare organisations can make practical and measurable changes. This includes the energy used within our buildings, travel and transport, waste, clinical consumables and our wider supply chain.

Our approach is informed by the wider direction of the NHS towards a lower-carbon and more resource-efficient health service. We aim to support this transition through proportionate, evidence-led action appropriate to PDSE's role as a dental social enterprise and education provider.

We will continue to measure and report our environmental impacts, review our priorities as our understanding develops and identify opportunities to make sustainability part of everyday decision-making throughout the organisation.

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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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