Your Plastic Toothbrush is Fuelling an Environmental Crisis
You wake up.
After a zillion iPhone snoozes you finally decide it’s time to rise and shine.
After a quick bite to eat, its teeth brushing time.
If you’re in autopilot, you might not have noticed, but you’re starting (and finishing) each day putting plastic in your mouth.
The typical life of a plastic toothbrush
3 months after you’re done with the plastic toothbrush, its discarded and taken to landfill where your plastic toothbrush takes as much as 1000 years to decompose.
Electric toothbrushes are guilty too, often made of plastic, rubber and a battery that leaks battery acid into wherever it is discarded. Most likely landfill or our oceans.
Creating the brushes themselves is a manufacturing intensive process requiring crude oils and petroleum. The packaging for toothbrushes? Yep, also plastic.
The worst trade deal of all time...
So, 3 months of productive use in exchange for 1000 years? Not a vibe for our planet. Especially if you multiply that little toothbrush journey by the billions of people currently using plastic toothbrushes. 4 times per year. Over many decades. Ah humanity, you sure do suck sometimes!
When we zoom out on our daily actions and observe life through an objective lens, we can start to appreciate the environmental challenge we collectively face.
As they say, it’s a game of inches. A game of daily decisions with a defining and lasting impact on our carbon footprint.
The not so innocent plastic toothbrush is fuelling an environmental crisis. And it's getting pretty hard to slow down. Perhaps consider where you fit into the equation. Maybe these words have ignited awareness and realisation for you in the issue or perhaps you're saying something like "But I've already ditched plastic!". In either case, there might be more that you can do.
Make the switch to an eco-friendly option
For the newcomers, explore alternative eco-friendly toothbrushes that are biodegradable & compostable. At Ecoy, we opt in for using bamboo toothbrushes. We also have a kids toothbrush that fits the description.
For those already playing their role and not using plastic toothbrushes, perhaps consider how you can influence friends and family (without being too preachy of course!) to make more sustainable decisions about the products they use in everyday life.
To be honest, it's not just plastic toothbrushes that are the sole issue. There's so many culprits that pollute our waterways and forests. If you're open to making a change today, we recommend these two recent content pieces:
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