When you think of ways to reduce your plastic waste, what do you think of? Reusable water bottles? Perhaps cotton shopping bags and coffee cups made of bamboo? If so, you’d be right. Reducing single use plastics such as water bottles is right up there as one of the most important, and relatively simple, swaps to make.
But what about in our bathrooms? Often overlooked in favour of eliminating single use plastic in the kitchen, there are lots of ways we can reduce the amount of plastic we have in our bathrooms.
A great place to start is with our oral care products. Here’s why…
Toothbrushes: A Blot on the Landscape
You know the drill. You visit your dentist every six months and you’re told to brush better, longer and gentler, use floss and consider an electric toothbrush.
The problem is, all this involves a huge amount of plastic. Our dentists also advise that we replace our toothbrushes every three months. If you follow this advice, that’s four toothbrushes each a year. (I know, we’re mathematical geniuses.)
In the UK alone, there’s around 67 million of us, all presumably using a toothbrush. Added together, that’s 268 million toothbrushes thrown away, every year. (Told you we were good.)
Ok, so babies have no teeth, and some of us might skip the night time brush. But the majority of us are dutifully brushing twice a day. And since plastic toothbrushes are only good as a tiny scrubbing brush when we’ve finished with them, that’s an awful lot going to landfill.
The answer to that is bamboo toothbrushes. Fully composable (aside from the bristles, but we’re working on that) they’re a more sustainable solution. Admittedly, they won’t make dentists that happy as they’re not (yet) electronic. But they’ll certainly make the planet happier.
Next on our plastic hit list, is toothpaste.
Toothpaste Tubes Aren’t Plastic, Are They?
We’re afraid so. They’re a mixture of plastic and aluminium that we can’t separate, which makes them easy on the squeezy-ness front, but difficult to recycle.
So they too, along with the millions of toothbrushes we toss away each year, end up sitting in landfill for hundreds of years. With most of us using two squeezes a day, that’s a whole load of tubes. (And a whole load of maths that’s more difficult to work out - we all have our limits - but we can place an educated guess somewhere in the hundreds of millions.)
What we haven’t limited is the effort we put into our toothpaste tablets. Because we think chewable toothpaste is the way forward. Our toothpaste tablets are designed to be super simple to use.
Pop one in your mouth when it’s time to brush and chew to release the minty freshness around your mouth. Then brush as normal using a wet (bamboo) toothbrush for shiny, clean teeth and a winning smile.
Brushd to the Rescue!
If you’re looking for plastic free, sustainable oral care products, made by a brand who cares about your oral hygiene as well as the environment, you’re in the right place.
As well as our bamboo toothbrushes and chewable toothpaste tablets, we have mouthwash tablets and zero waste charcoal dental floss, both homed in glass jars with metal lids. Making these swaps doesn’t feel like too much of a hardship when the future of our planet is at risk if we don’t.
We’ve got all you need to keep your mouth, and the planet happy. Smile!
