Show off those gleaming pearly whites with a dazzling smile, you’ve got something to be happy about, because no longer will your dental care give the planet a filling made up of plastic waste!

Use your wisdom tooth and make the right choice to switch your toothbrush from plastic to bamboo and keep that disposable plastic out of landfill.

(FYI: The bristles are still plastic, nylon 6, but there isn’t much alternative if you want a conventional style toothbrush. By swapping out the handle and replacing it with bamboo, you eliminate 90% of the plastic used to make a toothbrush, which is definitely a step forward! Turn that frown upside down and cheer hurrah for progress 😊)

Bamboo Toothbrush

Name: Bamboo Toothbrush
Brand: Zero Waste Club

£3.99

Colour

Quantity

Plastic toothbrushes. If we listen to our dentists, we should replace them at least every three months. That means we all chuck 4 plastic toothbrushes into landfill each year because they aren’t recycled. That is 40 toothbrushes a decade. Say the average age we live to in the UK is 80 something. That’s around 320 plastic toothbrushes each, and then times that by 66 million. Feeling queasy yet and not just because maths makes your head hurt? Those plastic toothbrushes aren’t going anywhere. They don’t sit and rot, they just sit. That is insane amounts of waste I am sure we can all agree. Why should our dental health come at the expense of the planet?
Plastic toothbrushes could be eradicated. We can cut down that 320 odd plastic toothbrushes we each will use in our lifetimes by using bamboo toothbrushes instead. Bamboo is sustainable because it is so fast growing, and it biodegrades. If it is a choice between a wooden handle and adding to the ever-growing pile of plastic toothbrushes in landfill I know what I’m choosing. They do the same thing, the bristles are the same, (your teeth will be as clean as ever, don’t worry) but they massively cut down on rubbish plastic waste. How are they not better??
Average price of plastic toothbrushes… everyone knows you can get a pack of 4 for like a pound. If you get a fancy branded one it can cost up to £4, but probably less. So yes. Bamboo toothbrushes are more expensive, in monetary terms alone. When you factor in the cost to the environment and the fact that plastic is made using oil, a non-renewable resource, the real cost of a plastic toothbrush becomes more apparent. If you are planning on bequeathing your plastic toothbrushes to your grandkids and they to their own grandkids, then you’ve eventually got your money’s worth environmentally speaking. That could be equivalent to one bamboo toothbrush then I guess.

It is not worth the convenience to buy plastic toothbrushes. I plan on outliving my toothbrushes, not the other way around.
What are they made from?

Handle: Bamboo.

Bristles: Nylon 6 … Yes, it is plastic, but there is not a lot of alternatives right now to plastic bristles unless you want to use boar bristles. Most people I have asked have told me that they don’t want to stick pig hair in their mouth thanks so goddamn plastic bristles it is. I can’t decide if I would use a boar hair toothbrush, but I am entertained by the thought that there is someone whose job it is to shave pigs.

I will offer alternatives in the future, but bamboo toothbrushes seem to have captured the UK’s imagination in the way boar bristle toothbrushes or miswak sticks have failed to. (Miswak is Nature's toothbrush, basically a twig from specific types of trees. A substantial population of the world still use these or similar, it is just the western world which is obsessed with sticking plastic in our mouths. If anyone can point me in the direction of Miswak which isn’t vacuum-packed in plastic I would be grateful for your assistance as I would love to have them on here!)

Packaging: 100% recycled cardboard.

The bamboo and the toothbrush are FDA-approved.

Any plastic in the supply chain?

My suppliers state ‘Currently the only plastic in our supply chain is the tape used when our partners in China ship over the goods to the UK. There is no other plastic in our supply chain. We have asked them to use paper tape but they claimed it will not be strong enough. However, when we visit the factory next year or so, we will sort this out.’

The bamboo and the toothbrush are FDA approved.

Where do they come from?

Zero Waste club tell me that their ‘Toothbrushes are designed in London, UK, and are manufactured ethically and sustainably in Ningbo, China.’

Are they sustainable?

Bamboo is a fast-growing grass that is generally seen as being one of the most sustainable plants due to the speed at which it grows. The bamboo Zero Waste Club use is ‘Mao’(Moso) bamboo.

How about ethical?

Zero Waste Club tell me their products are ‘manufactured ethically and sustainably in Ningbo, China. The workers at the factory get paid an hourly rate of 25RMB. Which is double the minimum wage in the region. The workers also get paid vacation.’

Lovely 😊 Good to see companies look after their workers.

Extra good stuff:

Zero Waste Club plant a tree for every toothbrush sold. I asked them about their tree planting policy and this was their reply:

‘The tree planting scheme works as per every item we sell we plant a tree. Our initial plans to do this was with a company called Trees For The Future (trees.org), they plant trees in over 28 countries. However, they do not plant them in China, where we get our bamboo from. So we are currently looking for a company in China to plant with. We are withholding planting the 5,000 trees so far till we find a company in China, because that's where we get our bamboo from. We want to give something back there because of this and also because China is heavily affected by air pollution and deforestation.

Zero Waste Club aim to be as transparent as possible. Which I wholeheartedly agree with as you can probably tell by now.

Conclusion –

Bare that toothy grin of yours because you are fighting plaque, I mean back, against plastic pollution!