NEBDN celebrates a year of going green whilst working from home

The National Examining Board for Dental Nurses (NEBDN), celebrate their 1-year milestone working remotely, following the ongoing global pandemic COVID-19. Since the national lockdown in March 2020, NEBDN has introduced new systems and processes to support the delivery of online examinations and has successfully managed to reduce its environmental footprint by working from home. So far, the Lancashire-based Charity has reduced its carbon footprint by 34 tonnes, which is enough Carbon Dioxide (CO2) emissions to heat a house for 23 years. NEBDN has improved new ways of working and reduced unnecessary pollutions by decreasing paper usage, travel consumption and facilitating new operational methods; by switching to online meetings, digital storage systems and online assessments.

Over the last year, NEBDN has made positive ‘green’ changes by providing staff members with reusable water bottles, recycling food and drink items, moving paper expenses to an online app, producing digital content and online tickets for events, and integrating new online software solutions to enable staff to send documents and video chat via a secure Cloud-based server, making paper minutes something of the past.

Since working remotely, NEBDN has saved a total of 131,000 travel miles, 110 sacks of confidential paper waste, and facilitated the success of 4,727 candidates sitting an online written or Objective Structured Clinical Examinations (OSCE) exam. This is a record for the most candidates sitting a dental nursing OSCE, which is a robust assessment method unique to NEBDN.

Since July 2020, NEBDN issued six online exams, saving the equivalent of 160,830 sheets of paper or 16 pine trees.

Kate Kerslake, CEO at NEBDN, commented: “As the CEO at NEBDN I’m incredibly proud of all that we’ve achieved over the year. Our team has continued to support its Course Providers in the teaching of our qualifications and support trainee and qualified Dental Nurses with their professional development during these very challenging times. Our commitment to creating a safe and robust online assessment method was developed over months not years, which is a true testament to the team and our operational staff.

“We understand costs of working from home affect the environment too, however a positive outcome of COVID-19 has been the immense reduction of travel for our Staff and “Trustees, and the amount of paper usage from facilitating exams. This has shown us how innovative and forward-thinking we can be, and as part of our ‘Going Green’ campaign this is something we plan to sustain throughout future years, as we continue to work towards creating a greener environment.”

NEBDN’s ‘Going Green’ campaign is a continued initiative to make positive environmental changes to lower its carbon emissions and generate greener solutions by utilising online platforms and lowering print and travel plans over the coming years, hosting more meetings virtually and looking at ways in which they safely recycle products. NEBDN is part of an Environmental Accomplishment recycling programme through one of its suppliers.

NEBDN is an Awarding Organisation and registered Charity based in Preston, Lancashire, delivering qualifications in both Pre-Registration and Post-Registration areas for dental nurses in the UK. NEBDN has been examining and awarding dental nursing qualifications for over 75 years and work alongside a network of 140+ accredited professionals to teach the students.

NEBDN continue to make changes to reduce emissions from remote working where possible and will continue to challenge itself in striving to be a more sustainable organisation.