hey this is dr amanda with street smile solutions street smile solutions.com and today we're going
to talk about the sustainability of clear liners invisalign or really any clear liner company
versus braces and what you can do to help and i'm really glad that people are starting to reach
out to me about this because this is something that's bothered me for years um if not a decade
um i love clear aligners so much they're so great but you know from a patient perspective it's more
comfortable it's healthier it's less time but it is not sustainable at the moment and i was
really excited about two years ago i was informed by invisalign that they were launching a pilot
program to recycle aligners from you know old liners from patients collect them from doctors
a lot of times if you start invisalign treatment or even clear correct too and you know you don't
quite track then they need to do something called a refinement or a mid-course correction with that
there's a lot of plastic that also gets thrown away of the unused old aligners so
um i was really excited that they were launching their pilot program but i've been
told off the record and also for burst there's nothing published or available um
i see some q and a's on reddit and quora where invisalign they're saying no we don't
have a recycling program anymore so i guess what they were saying and i could have told you this
is that their aligners are made of what makes smarttrak such a great material is that there's
multiple layers of multiple different plastics and for that reason they cannot
recycle it because they can't peel apart the different layers i don't know if that makes sense
so i mean i'm sure there's and and what you see is not just the old liners you didn't use
in the fabrication of the aligners there's so much more disco there's if i had to guess 20 30
50 times discarded plastic now maybe or maybe not that can be recycled i don't know the way
an aligner is made and if you go back to some of my older videos you'll see a lot of demos on this
i'm actually in a lab we're demoing how we're doing it
basically you from the computer it's going to print out you know cad design it's going to print
plastic model of your teeth it's like a 3d plastic model of your teeth from there this thin layer
of a liner material is thermoform or heated or melted on top of it to be an exact replica of the
3d model of your teeth so not only do we have the extra plastic weight of every single arch
if you have 450 aligners every single arch has a little model of your teeth that has to get thrown
away that's a lot of plastic there maybe that's recyclable maybe it's not i personally think
invisalign should tell us because i'd like to know and all the aligners companies should tell us
but you also have the extra flash or the material around this one how it's fabricated plus you have
all these when you're done using them plus you have all these if you do a revision or refinement
it's a lot of plastic like literally i'd be scared per case i mean it's easily got to be a trash can
full of plastic easily so where does it go what does invisalign do with it obviously they're
manufacturing their aligners in mexico so where does it go i want to know so i think we have a
right to know and i think you guys as consumers should be demanding to know where it goes
you know and is there a way is there a company that could take our old aligners in the us and
i mean you see people making all kind of stuff out of old plastic i mean um maybe it can't go
in the municipal recycling program but you know they can use it to make all all kind of stuff
so i think it would be really great if somebody could find a way to recycle these you know to
help our earth and yes braces are definitely more sustainable if that is something that is important
to you then you should pick braces even though it's more more appointments and less gentle on
your teeth and less healthy for you it is more sustainable for the environment so just so you
know because there's really no waste that comes from having braces so all right thanks so much