Clean Green

This morning, while brushing my teeth I started contemplating the sustainability of my toothpaste. Is it better to use Toms of Maine? Or some kind of tooth powder? Or should I start using my Dr. Bronner's as toothpaste (it says I can on the bottle, but it's lavender...and I really am attached to that minty clean feeling).

Then I started wondering about my toothbrush itself. It's plastic, and I am supposed to throw it out and get a new one every three months, so I decided to look into it a little further and discovered that "it's reported that over 25 000 tons of toothbrushes end up in landfill in America each year" thanks to Green Living Tips. They had a list of ideas for post toothbrushing uses for a tooth brush (after you've bleached it, presumably with a relatively environmentally friendly bleach) such as:- Scrubbing in between tiles, Knocking off dust that's caked onto other items, Comb cleaning, As a paintbrush for the kids art projects, Cleaning a cheese grater, cleaning jewelry in conjunction with baking soda, upholstery and carpet stain removal, Applying hair dye, Scrubbing dirt off hard skinned fruit and vegetables, To clean car battery terminals, Cleaning mud or dog poop from shoes.


While all these things are useful, I also looked into actual tooth brush recycling programs and found the following:


Preserve toothbrushes are made from recycled materials, and you can send them back to the company to get re-recycled. They also offer a replacement subscription, so that you never have to think about buying a new brush, they mail you a new one every three months. This is the only company I found that actually takes back and recycles your tooth brush.


The following two companies make toothbrushes with replaceable heads,


Eco-Dent makes a replaceable head tooth brush, which limits the amount of waste produced


Radius has a brush called Source whose handles are molded from recycled US Dollar bills/Recycled Flax and Recycled Wood all blended with recycled polypropylene resulting in a bio-plastic that is 100% renewable or recycled. They also have replaceable heads. And they look cool. and you can tell your friends that you brush your teeth with dollar bills.


As for toothpaste options I found a German company called Weleda, which makes a salt toothpaste in environmentally friendly packaging, and while they do have a North American business center, it says nothing about local production.  There is also obviously Toms of Maine, and Eco-Dent also makes an organic tooth powder.