It may not be something you think about often, but a zero waste toothbrush or bamboo toothbrushes can have a huge positive impact on our environment. How many toothbrushes have you thrown out in the past year? When I sat down to think about it, I was shocked at the amount of toothbrushes I had tossed in my lifetime.
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Why A Zero Waste Toothbrush?
Let me start by saying that most of the toothbrushes you find in the store are single use plastic items. They never decompose, so it’s pretty safe to say that every toothbrush you have ever used is still on the planet somewhere.
Think about how many toothbrushes you throw out in a year, or a decade, or a lifetime? If the average person throws out a toothbrush every 3 months, which is the recommended time for getting a new toothbrush, that means that people are getting about 4 news toothbrushes a year. That’s 40 toothbrushes per decade, and about 3,200 toothbrushes in a lifetime!
Now, think about this. Let’s say you are a family of four, that’s 16 toothbrushes a year. In a one decade, that’s 160 toothbrushes just sitting in a landfill! Imagine the impact just one family, or even one person, can have if they switched to a zero waste toothbrush?
Toothbrushes are something that need to be replaced often, there really is no getting around that fact. By choosing an option that’s safer for the environment, one family can make a huge impact.
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Where Can I find an Eco-Friendly Toothbrush?
Personally, I have not seen any eco-friendly toothbrushes in a big brand store like Walmart or Target yet. (If you have, please let me know!) Your local health food store might have a couple options in stock, if you are lucky enough to have a store nearby. If you can’t find any in a store near you, luckily, there are so many options available online, and they are pretty inexpensive too.
If you go to Amazon or Google and type in ‘Bamboo Toothbrushes’ it will bring up loads of options for you to choose from. You can get one for every member of your family, without breaking the bank.
A Few Options to Check Out:
- Behave Green Bamboo Brushes 4-Pack
- Ecobam Bamboo Charcoal 4-Pack
- GoWoo Adult Colored Crushes 4-Pack
- o1Brand Kids Bamboo 4-Pack
- TeeRova Rainbow Nylon Bristle 10-Pack
These toothbrushes are all in cardboard packaging so the packagine can be recycled, they are mostly created with recycled materials as well, making them an eco-friendly toothbrush option.
Why Bamboo Toothbrushes?
Bamboo is an excellent renewable resource because it can be grown and harvested in as little as one year. A single bamboo plant can grow up to 3 feet in just one day! It’s safe to say that Bamboo is the fastest growing plant on earth! Trees like oak or pine take decades to grow enough so that they can be harvested to make goods. We are losing our forests at rapid rates due to deforestation, and using more bamboo items can help combat that.
When using bamboo to make our goods, there is next to no waste. Bamboo can be made into such a huge amount of products that virtually every part of the plant is used.
Bamboo is also a very hardy plant. It can grow in a wide variety of conditions and can withstand areas with droughts or grow in wetlands. It also helps protect soil, since you leave the roots in place when you cut the plant, this helps with erosion and keeps moisture in the soil.
You can read more about bamboo here.
What Else Can Bamboo Do?
There is such a wide variety of items that can be made from Bamboo, it’s a pretty amazing plant. On top of toothbrushes, we can also use bamboo to make cutlery, clothing items, kitchen products, paper products, accessories like necklaces and earrings, and diapers to name a few household items.
But Bamboo can go even bigger. Bamboo can also be used to build fencing, roads and bridges, houses, medicine, flooring, counter tops, furniture, fuel, and so much more.
Imagine if we started replacing more items in our everyday lives with Bamboo alternatives, the environmental impact would be huge.
Plastic is Killing our Planet and Wildlife
By now, I think this goes without saying. I’m going to say it again because everyone needs to hear it; Plastic is literally killing our planet and wildlife.
We read about it almost daily. The amount of plastic bottles in our oceans and landfills is astronomical and it is growing rapidly everyday. We see images of dead whales and other sea life all the time. It always comes with a headline that tells us how many pounds of plastic were in these poor animals stomachs.
I know we can get overwhelmed with all the information and think how can one person actually help? But look at it this way, if you are at the store and grab a bottle of water and think to yourself, “what’s just one more plastic bottle?” How many other people around the world are saying that exact same thing? So no, it’s not just one more plastic bottle, it’s hundreds and thousands of bottles everyday.
Small steps do lead to big changes when we work together. Even if you aren’t interested in switching your toothbrushes to zero waste options right now, I encourage you to pick just one thing to work on. It could be cutting out plastic bottles by always having a reusable bottle or tumbler with you, or maybe cutting out plastic straws and using plastic or metal straw options.
If everyone just made one change we could all make a big impact. Let me know in the comments if you have made any positive changes lately, or if you have switched to a bamboo toothbrush. I would love to hear about it!