Background: Dental materials are usually fabricated from metallic and non metallic materials, which are mainly obtained from natural resources from the surrounding environment. These natural resources are getting exhausted due to extensive usage and hence, recycling may act as a tool to correct the imbalance taking place in the nature and also help patients by reducing the cost of the treatment.
Objectives: To develop new methods to recycle and reuse dental base metal casting alloys, silver amalgam alloy restorations and dental waxes to reduce the cost of the treatment and save natural resources.
Materials and Methods: Base metal alloys such as Co-Cr, Ni-Cr are used to prepare dental restorations by precision casting technique. Fifty to sixty percent of left over alloy, after casting procedure, going as wastage, is collected and their properties are studied for reuse. Silver amalgam alloy restoration is still one of the popular restorative materials used in dental clinics as well as dental colleges. Hundred percent amalgam mix goes as wastage in dental teaching institutions and about 1/4th goes as wastage in dental clinics. This wastage contains fifty to sixty percent mercury and twenty-five to thirty percent silver. Using simple laboratory techniques, this wastage can be recycled to separate silver and mercury. Modeling wax (Base plate wax) in dentistry is most widely used to prepare occlusal rims during the fabrication of complete denture and as an accessory aid during the fabrication of many dental appliances. In this technique 90% of wax can be recovered since wax is not consumed but rejected, which can be easily collected and purified by simple inexpensive method to remove all the adhering impurities without affecting their properties.
Results: By recycling the above dental materials in dental colleges of India (About 300 colleges). We can recover approximately 500-550 kilograms of base metal alloys (Co-Cr & Ni-Cr), about 500 kilograms of silver, 850 900 kilograms of mercury and 100,000 110,000 kilograms of waxes.
Conclusion: By recycling the above materials. The treatment cost can be reduced by 30-40%, Natural resources can be saved from getting depleted by conserving the earth resources. Mercury health hazards can be prevented since, mercury is not disposed to the environment but recollected after recycling.
Key words: Recycling, Cr-Co alloys, Silver amalgam, Dental waxes
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