We all remember visiting the dentist as children and receiving a sticker as a reward. At Smile Together, we’re no different, but our team started to wonder: could we make those stickers more sustainable? As a certified B Corporation putting our people, our patients, our community and increasingly our planet first means Smile Together colleagues are keen to make a sustainable difference wherever we can.
Our Purchasing Specialist helps us partner with those in our supply chain and, where possible, source and procure more sustainably. She investigated biodegradable sticker options and our clinical teams thought this seemed like the perfect opportunity to engage our younger patients and local school communities. So we launched a competition to design new stickers for our practices.
We were thrilled to receive lots of colourful masterpieces from those patients who attend our practices across Cornwall and the Isles of Scilly as well as entries from local school communities that our Smarter Smiles teams deliver their oral health promotion in. Our judges had a hard job narrowing down the finalists, but we came away with 5 winners and 5 new stickers!
Our winners were: Leo who gave us an insight into the tooth fairy’s world; Charlie who drew a very friendly dentist; Isaac who did a lovely job illustrating the wild Scilly seas; Hanna who drew a very realistic and detailed mouth and Robyn who created a very colourful lighthouse. Each of our winners received an electric toothbrush as a prize for their creative efforts alongside a handful of their own printed stickers! We want to say a big thank you to everyone who submitted entries, they were all fantastic and made deciding very difficult!
Outreach Dental Therapist, Nat said: “we were completely blown away by the amazing sticker designs we received from across Cornwall and the Isles of Scilly. I’m really passionate about making the clinical environment for our young patients as fun and friendly as possible and am therefore so excited to start giving out our new range of brightly coloured and unique stickers. The fact that they are biodegradable is amazing too and it has been lots of fun encouraging our patients and the local schools to get involved.”
We’re looking forward to sharing our new stickers with our patients, young and old (you’re never too old for a sticker!) and bringing a little bit of sparkle to each visit.
