Environmentally Friendly Household — A Zero-Plastic Toothbrush
This week I’m looking for a plastic-free toothbrush to replace an Oral-B Indicator 35 brush I’m using right now.
Supermarkets
I’ll start my hunt in the biggest supermarkets in the UK.
Top three
Tesco, Sainsbury’s and Asda are the top three chains in the country with 27.8%, 15.8% and 15.3% market share, respectively. Tesco’s website offers 67 toothbrushes to choose from, Sainsbury’s — 64, Asda — 78. But if your priority is to reduce the amount of plastic in your household, you’ll leave all these supermarkets empty-handed.
Waitrose
A toothbrush search on the Waitrose website returns 65 different options, where 2 out of 65 (3%) are made from biodegradable bamboo (one for adults, one for kids). You are definitely not overwhelmed with choice, but at least you have a brush.
Boots
I purchase all my dental care at Boots. So how is this health and beauty retailer doing? Boots offers 120 toothbrushes, but only 4 out of 120 (3%) are plastic-free. Both Boots and Waitrose have the same manufacturer on their shelves — Sweden-based company The Humble Co. that sells eco-friendly products in the health and well-being niche. So that is the only option you get if you don’t want to search beyond the biggest supermarkets because major toothbrush manufacturers (like Colgate-Palmolive and Oral-B) that are presented in these chains don’t have any plastic-free brushes.
Manufacturers and Recycling
I asked Colgate and Oral-B if they are planning to start manufacturing plastic-free toothbrushes, and the short answer is No. The long answer: both companies reassured me that they are taking environmental concerns very seriously, and then immersed themselves into their future plans around packaging (though I didn’t ask about packaging…).
Oral-B
Today more than ever, people care about what happens to the packaging of the products they purchase. It’s one of the most complex challenges facing our world. We have a responsibility to help reduce the amount of plastic waste on our planet, and we continue to take steps toward this goal. Currently nearly 90% of our packaging is recyclable, and by 2025 all of our major packaging platforms will be recyclable, and we are working to get to 100% recyclable or reusable packaging by 2030.
The new 2030 goals we’ve announced go beyond packaging and include commitments that span our brands, supply chain, society and our employees. You can and should expect that we remain committed to these efforts.
Colgate-Palmolive
We are committed to reducing waste and increasing the recyclability of our packaging and products. We recognise the importance of reducing waste at every stage of the product life cycle, including at the end-of-life of our products and packaging. In 2014 we committed to improve the recyclability of our packaging, committing resources to enable breakthrough innovation in oral care packaging.
We have also committed to deliver 100% recyclable packaging in our personal care, home care and Hill’s pet nutrition categories. Additionally, we will increase the recycled content of our packaging to 50% for 2020.
If both emails were designed to make me feel better about the situation, they failed miserably. Firstly, it is the European Parliament initiative to make all plastic packaging reusable or recyclable by 2030, and Oral-B and Colgate are just trying to be compliant with the new rules. Secondly, the problem with recyclable packaging is that it should be recycled, and we are not particularly diligent about it right now.
According to the information on the European Parliament website, 322 million tonnes of plastic are being produced in the European Union (EU) every year, and only 30% of all this waste is collected for recycling. Half of that is ‘exported to be treated in countries outside the EU’, which does not necessarily mean that is actually recycled. If we assume a worst-case scenario, whereby only 15% of the plastic waste is recycled each year, it means that 273.7 million tonnes of plastic are being added to our lands, rivers, seas and oceans every year.
Let’s put these numbers into perspective. As of 1 January 2018, the population of the EU was about 512.6 million people. This means that we are producing 628 kg of plastic per person per year. With the average weight of an adult human being 62 kg, it is basically the weight of 10 humans. And these ‘plastic humans’ live much longer than we do.
The blue whale is the biggest animal ever known to have lived on earth (approximately 150 tonnes). Every year just the EU alone is producing more than 2 millions of ‘plastic whales’. Ouch!
Now let’s take a look at a few recycling initiatives led by Oral-B and Colgate-Palmolive. On the Oral-B website, for example, you can find a recycling programme for their electric toothbrushes:
How can I recycle my Oral-B electric toothbrush in the UK?
You can recycle your Oral-B electric toothbrush in the UK by sending it to our Service Partner, Olympic Shaver Centre.
Simply package up your toothbrush and send it to the following address:
Olympic Shaver Centre,
FAO The Recycling Team
Units 19–20 Calverton Business Park,
Hoyle Rd, Calverton,
Nottingham,
NG14 6QL
I use only manual toothbrushes, so this programme doesn’t even apply to me. But, taking into account the amount of effort required, I wonder how many Oral-B customers are actually returning their toothbrushes.
Colgate-Palmolive partnered with TerraCycle to create a recycling scheme for oral care products and packaging, no matter who the manufacturer is. The idea is simple: you create a drop-off location at your company, school or even house, you collect items destined for recycling from everyone who is willing to make a journey to your location, and then, when the box is full, you send it with all the contents to TerraCycle.
Now let’s assume that you are living in the London Borough of Southwark in south London, postal code SE17. The Colgate® Oral Care Recycling Programme is now full for members who want to collect privately, and creating a public drop-off location might not be an option for you unless you are living on the ground floor, and don’t mind people coming into your private garden to drop plastic waste into your bin.
If you are not living on the ground floor, you should use existing locations. The nearest one is at Marylebone. It would take you more than an hour and cost £4.80 to do a return journey. Doubtful that many people would be willing to do that.
But maybe it is just London? What if you live in Cambridge? The situation here seems a bit better. There is a drop-off location in the city centre in the market square, and this square is visited by many people during weekends. So, last Friday I made a trip to the location marked on the map. I found nothing. When I got home, I double checked the information on the website and apparently it is available only once a week: on Mondays from 10 a.m until 4 p.m.
If Colgate or Oral-B were indeed trying to do something about the problem they would work together with distributors to collect recyclable plastic waste from Tesco, Sainsbury’s, Asda and other big stores, they would come up with plastic-free alternatives; and they would initiate refill programmes. What they are doing right now I would classify as ‘We are trying to make an impression that we are doing something’, rather than ‘We are actually doing something’.
So most likely you won’t be able to go to a Tesco Express and buy a biodegradable toothbrush any time soon, but you can purchase it from multiple online stores.
Online stores
I bought an EcoTeeth bamboo toothbrush a week ago, mainly because the manufacturer is claiming that bamboo fibre is used for the bristles instead of nylon, although they seem very much like nylon to me! I think I’ll just send a sample to a lab to make sure it is indeed bamboo fibre and not just a marketing campaign.
A toothbrush is probably the easiest item in your bathroom to replace. Simply search for a zero-plastic toothbrush on Google or Amazon and you’ll get hundreds of results. Things are way more complicated with toothpaste… but we’ll talk about that later!
