photo by Peter Medilek

Every aspect of our space has been designed to maximize your comfort, and to reflect our commitment to environmentally sound business practices. We've checked around, and believe we're the first eco-friendly dental office in the country. Sustainability permeates every aspect of our practice from biocompatible dental materials, to walls finished with paint that doesn't contain nasty volatile organic compounds (VOCs).


After a rigorous multi-agency inspection process coordinated by the Bay Area Green Business Program (www.greenbiz.ca.gov), we are the first dental office to be certified as a green business.

Transcendentist is pleased to be the 2007 winner of the Susanne Wilson Award for Pollution Prevention/Resource Conservation from the Acterra Business Environmental Awards for creating the model for environmentally sound dental practices. more

In 2008, Dr. Pockrass and wife Ina Pockrass Co-Founded The Eco-Dentistry Association, making it easy and cost-effective for the dental industry to make the shift to green practices, and educating the public about the benefits of eco-friendly dentistry. They created the organization as the next step in their long-standing commitment to transforming dentistry, which they’ve been championing under the brand Eco-DentistryTM since 2003. Learn more at www.ecodentistry.org.

We are also members of the East Bay’s Sustainable Business Alliance (www.sustainablebiz.org ), and have taken the bold step of offsetting our electrical power use with wind power ( www.3phases.com ). We also serve on the Steering Committee for Sustainable Berkeley, a coalition of stakeholders committed to making Berkeley the nation's most sustainable city. We see ourselves as models for other health practitioners and are encouraged by the up-tick in green health care providers.

Here is a sampling of what eco-dentistry™ means and what we do to lighten our footprint on the Earth:

		Our wallpapers are made of reclaimed paper pulp and bark
		Our floors were refinished with water-based polyurethane, our carpets are made of untreated wool, and our flooring is Marmoleum®, a natural alternative to vinyl which is made of flax, wood flour and rosins
		Much of our furniture is made of recycled woods, is covered in cottons, silks and wool and stuffed with kapok, which comes from a silk-cotton tree
		We use only steam-based instrument sterilization, which contains no harmful chemicals
		We installed a special filtration system to allow environmentally sound disposal of old mercury fillings, to prevent pollution of our water system
		All of the paper in the office is recycled, and we use only digital patient charting to reduce paper use
		We wrap our instruments in surgical-grade cloth, not disposable plastic or paper.
		We use digital imaging (not traditional x-rays), which means 75 to 90% less radiation for our clients and no toxic x-ray development chemicals
		Instead of paper head rest covers and patient “bibs”, ours are made of pure cotton terry cloth, washed on-site in an energy efficient washer and dryer
		Our office is lovingly cleaned with only environmentally safe cleaning methods by Tibby Janitorial.