Do You Know Just How Bad a Plastic Toothbrush Is for the Environment?

If you stop to think of things you use every day that are bad for the environment, there are probably a few different things that come to mind, including your car, plastic water bottles, and disposable food containers. Most people wouldn’t think about their toothbrushes, but believe it or not, these little items take up a lot of space in landfills. Here’s why your plastic manual toothbrush isn’t as eco-friendly as you might believe.

Just How Many Toothbrushes Find their Way into Landfills?

Back in 2015, reports showed that Americans alone threw away somewhere between 850 million and a billion (1,000,000,000 – that’s a lot of zeroes) toothbrushes each year. That’s 50,000,000 pounds of waste making its way into landfills every single year. To put that into perspective, we throw away the weight equivalent of a fully-loaded cruise ship every single year in toothbrushes alone, and that’s just in the United States. Imagine the impact when you factor in other highly-populated countries like China, the entire continent of Europe, and so on.

Now that you have a good understanding of the sheer volume of waste created, remember that it takes roughly 1000 years for a single toothbrush to biodegrade. Suddenly, it’s quite easy to see the impact your seemingly insignificant toothbrush has on the environment. If you’re trying to think of ways to reduce your consumption of plastic and reduce the waste generated by your household, your toothbrush is a good (and simple, affordable, and fun) place to start.

The Impact of Toothbrush Production

As if a cruise ship’s weight worth of toothbrushes finding their way into landfills in the US every year wasn’t enough, there’s also the production aspect to consider. Most toothbrushes out there – the ones you’ll find in drug and department stores, for example – aren’t made with recycled plastic. That means these manufacturers start with crude oil that must be refined into petroleum and then processed even further into plastic – a process that not only consumes a great deal of energy, but also puts tons (literal tons) of nasty greenhouse gases into the environment. Every year, manufacturers around the globe make almost five billion toothbrushes.

What if you could do something right now to change all of this? Fortunately, thanks to WooBamboo’s planet-friendly line of bamboo toothbrushes, you can. These toothbrushes aren’t like the rest; instead of plastic, they are manufactured from renewable and sustainable bamboo. Bamboo doesn’t require refining like oil, and while it does require some processing, it is far simpler than plastic processing and consumes far less energy. This means that you can feel good about buying bamboo toothbrushes, and you can do your part to reduce the billion or so that find their way into landfills each year.

WooBamboo toothbrushes are a fantastic way to reduce your impact on the environment one smile at a time. They are some of the most eco-friendly toothbrushes on the planet since they are made with organically-grown bamboo that, like your favorite kitchen cutting board, is naturally antimicrobial. The best part? WooBamboo toothbrushes look cool, so everyone will love using them.  

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