vegan dental lace sea glass design on container

What you didn’t know you’ve been waiting for, plastic-free dental floss that is vegan friendly! For those of you whose dental hygiene has been suffering because you realised that dental floss is plastic in plastic, and if you weren’t happy with silk as an alternative, this is one for you.

Not only will your friends thank you for removing that little bit of lettuce you’ve had stuck in your teeth for months, but you will look stylish doing so with the delightfully designed container. You even get a refill spool of floss thrown in as well. Sweet.

This vegan floss is 100% plant-based, made out of PLA (polylactic acid) which is a bioplastic, derived from corn starch. Each packet of Dental Lace contains the glass Dental Lace container with a spool of floss inside and an extra spool of refill floss. Vegan Dental Lace Refill packs contain two spools of floss with which to refill the Dental Lace container.

Is this floss right for you? –

The vegan floss is thicker and stronger than the silk floss, which is finer and softer than the vegan floss. Some customers have found this floss shreds quite easily, so is better suited for those with teeth that are a bit more widely spaced.

(I’ve got tightly packed teeth and I couldn’t even get the vegan floss in between most of my teeth, as the strand is too thick. Please bear this in mind if you have similarly set teeth with little space between them. - In this case, try the original silk floss if you have no moral objections and just want to floss comfortably.)

If you don’t like the minty flavour of the silk Dental Lace, you'll love this version, as this vegan floss has no particular flavour or taste, it is just neutral.

Vegan Dental Lace

£8.50

Quantity

All other dental floss is generally packaged in plastic. And made out of plastic. And once you’re done, you buy another one.

This vegan floss may even be a replacement for your replacement plastic-free silk floss… trying to make eco-friendly choices is all about these small upgrades.
It is refillable, so infinitely reusable! And you can recycle the container afterwards, once you’ve lost all your teeth. How fab.

The floss is 100% biodegradable and compostable. So is the packaging.

Why choose Dental Lace? Dental Lace was the first plastic-free, refillable and biodegradable dental floss product in the world. All others you may have seen will have been inspired by Dental Lace! It’s also much prettier than other options on the market, allowing you to floss with style. 😊
But, I hear you say, ‘….It seems expensive, though?’

You are right. It does seem expensive. Let’s think about it. The average price of dental floss seems to come in at around £1.50 - £4 for around 25 to 50m depending on the brand. Dental lace is £8.50, but you get 2 spools in a packet, which equals 60m of floss. And nicer refillable packaging. Plus, the refills by themselves when it comes to that are cheaper because there is no container. And… no more throw away plastic disposable dental floss. How many containers of plastic dental floss would you throw away in your lifetime otherwise? How many would everyone who uses dental floss throw away in their lifetimes? Where are all those plastic containers and plastic floss ending up???

Hopefully, that is justification enough.

(If you already use dental floss that is. If you don’t, but want to experiment with improving your teeth cleaning regime, great! If your pearly whites are already pearly and well, white, good for you, look after them gnasher's.)
What is it made from?

Floss = Polylactic acid (PLA) which is a bioplastic.

Floss coating = Candelilla wax (vegan). Unflavoured.

Container = Glass

Lid = Stainless steel

Label = Waterproof Poly label*

Packaging = 'Boxes 100% post-consumer fibre that is certified FSC and PCF free. Manufactured using renewable biogas energy. Printed with soy-based inks.'

Refill wrapper = 'Polylactide Acid bags created from the lactic acid in plants. Certified compostable.' Bioplastic. PLA is one of the 'good' plastics.

* Hang on, isn’t that a plastic label I spy?

Yes, it is, this is only a 90% plastic-free product, but, there’s a good reason for it! I’ll let Jodi Breau, the owner and founder of Dental Lace explain in her own words - ‘If we are striving to reduce plastic waste, then why the poly label? The non-slip label is waterproof, and the label will help prevent it from shattering if dropped. A few of our customers have broken their container, fortunately, the label held the container together without creating a larger mess and potential cuts from the broken glass. Our goal is to provide you with the best zero waste option for your dental floss in a stylish container, we are lucky the added style provides an extra layer of security for your reusable container.’

I have also found this to be the case with a few of ABP’s customers. I’ve had less than a handful of emails about this and we’ve sold thousands of these now, as thankfully, the Dental Lace glass container is quite hard to break in the first place. I’ve dropped mine so many times, and I keep it in a pocket of my bag which contains multiple sets of keys and it hasn’t broken yet. I’ve never had to replace the original container I bought as a sample back in 2017! Safety is important when dealing with glass, so I think this is an acceptable use of plastic in this instance. The container is refillable so it is not being thrown away willy-nilly so fewer worries there. Jodi is working on an alternative sticky label made from PLA (like the other components of this vegan floss) so we will hopefully see that upgrade soon!

Where does it come from?

Maine, in the US. Shipped by Airmail. (We'll see what I can do about this in future but I am just placing small orders right now so ship shipping won't happen yet.) America is way ahead of the UK in terms of plastic-free items so until we catch up this is what's happening. The floss itself is sourced from China, along with Dental Lace’s original silk floss. It is packaged and put together by hand in Maine.

Is it sustainable?

Good - 100% Vegan. The paper packaging is FSC rated and biodegradable. The wax coating is food safe and biodegradable. The container and lid are reusable and easily recyclable.

Ok - The PLA floss and refill wrapper are biodegradable and can be home composted (but PLA does have some issues with chemicals in the manufacturing process so it’s not perfect.)

Bad - The label is plastic, although as the container is reusable this is acceptable in comparison to buying dental floss that is made out of plastic and in a plastic container.

PLA (polylactic acid) is a bioplastic made from renewable resources. It acts like plastic but is made from sources of starch or sugar, normally corn starch. It is similar to cellophane, the loud crinkly noise the refill packet makes gives it away as a bioplastic rather than a petrochemical-plastic. The packet and the floss, which are both made from PLA although they look and feel very different, can be either home composted, or, composted in facilities that compost food waste on an industrial scale. If you have a food waste collection bin you may be able to put this film in that bin, check your council website to see if they will accept this.

Is there any certification to prove that the Dental Lace silk floss and the new PLA vegan floss is compostable?

Dental Lace has said that ‘We have not spent the money to have our floss certified compostable. It is very expensive. We had it tested by the Maine State Compost Facility. The PLA floss has been tested by us and friends and neighbours in our homestyle bins. Our refill storage bags also made of PLA are compostable. The PLA floss takes about 6-10 months to compost in our bins. We noticed that the refill bags also take about this long to compost too.’

Composting PLA in large amounts will need the help of an industrial composter, (e.g. a PLA takeaway cup needs to be industrially composted unless you have a whopper of a compost pile!) but short threads like PLA floss should be able to break down in home-composting conditions. It is considered a ‘brown’ material for all the avid composting fans out there. http://greensxm.com/composting-pla-plastic/

How is PLA vegan floss better than the vegan bamboo charcoal floss I’ve seen?

Sorry to have to break it to you, but that ‘bamboo charcoal’ floss is actually sneaky plastic! It’s made from polyester ‘infused’ with bamboo charcoal; it is not made of bamboo fibres. A while ago Jodi (the inventor of Dental Lace) thought she had found a vegan floss at last and bought in some of this bamboo charcoal floss, only to find out afterwards that she’d been tricked and that it was really plastic. Once she found this out, she promptly corrected this information on her website for this particular product to reflect the fact that it isn’t plastic-free, but is still a vegan floss. Unfortunately, I know that other retailers here in the UK who had separately sourced this vegan bamboo charcoal floss didn’t realise this was plastic floss (or didn’t disclose it to customers) and there was a bit of a scandal. Jodi has always aimed to be transparent with her business and customers and is always trying to improve on her product and the range she can offer. Her search for fully compostable vegan floss continued until at last, she has managed to find a compostable bioplastic PLA based floss to add to her range as a fully vegan and compostable floss. I held off on stocking vegan floss until she released this compostable vegan product as although I would like to provide vegan options, I was unwilling to compromise on plastic floss.

How about ethical?

Is Dental Lace made in ethical conditions? How does Dental Lace monitor its supply chain to make sure of this?

Jodi from Dental Lace says, ‘Always a concern for us. We import the floss and containers. We confirm our suppliers ISO Certification and their FDA Approval. We received all the specs and safety specifications for the floss. Everything else is made and assembled here in the USA, mostly Maine, USA. We treat our workers very well, they're our family. We make sure they follow all our policies concerning sterile conditions. I have made every effort to monitor our suppliers. It is important to me that Dental Lace Refillable Floss be the best switch from plastic floss in the world.’

Conclusion –

Smile! Let that Cheshire Cat grin out to play because you are saving the environment by cutting out 99% of the plastic in your dental floss and you’ve saved a silkworm from forced labour hooray!

Customer endorsements:

‘Do I detect a hint of minty freshness?’ – Donkey, off of Shrek.

‘They sure are handy when you smile. So keep your teeth around a while!’ – Dr Seuss.

‘If I’d have known about Dental Lace, I wouldn’t have bothered moving to Montana’ – Frank Zappa