Episode Summary: This discussion on toothbrushes is an excerpt from a previous episode ‘Toothpaste, Dentistry and Plastics’ 

Have you ever thought about the environmental impact of your daily habit of taking care of your teeth?

Jenn, Leekei and Rob discussed the environmental impact of taking care of our teeth as well as plastics contained in toothbrushes and dental floss.

This particular segment focuses on the micro-plastics in toothpaste that inevitably end up in our waterways, rivers, and oceans, and explores potential alternative solutions.

To listen to the full episode of this conversation, go here 

For more information on the project and to order your copy of the Carbon Almanac, visit thecarbonalmanac.org

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Visit thecarbonalmanac.org/podcasts and send us a voice message on this episode or any other climate-related ideas and perspectives. 

Don’t Take Our Word For It, Look It Up!

You can find out more on pages 78 and 79 of the Carbon Almanac and on the website you can tap the footnotes link and type in 027 and 346

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Featuring Carbon Almanac Contributors Rob Slater, Jen Swanson and Leekei Tang

Rob is from Birmingham in the UK, he is an orthodontist, triathlete, coach and podcaster.

From Langley in British Columbia, Canada, Jenn is a Minister, Coach, Writer and Community Connector, helping people help themselves. 

Leekei is a fashion business founder, a business coach, an international development expert and podcaster from Paris, France. 

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The CarbonSessions Podcast is produced and edited by Leekei Tang, Steve Heatherington and Rob Slater.

So, uh, I, I think that one, one area.

That I quite like is moving towards, , toothpaste tablets.

They're not really toothpaste, but they're a tablet instead of, , a paste.

Um, , the big problem with toothpastes is that often the.

The toothpaste itself, the tube itself is made outta a combination.

Sometimes plastics try to move away from metals cuz the combination

of metal and plastic makes them even more difficult to recycle.

if you've got plastics, then rolling them up.

There's some companies actually even will try to design it.

So that 10% of the toothpaste is left in the tube that you can't get.

BEC that 10% is wasted and all of these, uh, toothpastes have got microplastics in.

So we're putting these microplastics in our mouth, which help to

scour the surface of the enamel.

But we then spit that into, , the.

Water supply goes off, down, into the water waste, , and, uh, of

course into our rivers and streams.

So , that's quite a worrying thing.

And I think that if we can move towards other forms of, um, perhaps

toothpaste that don't have microplastics in or, uh, toothpaste tablets, and

that could be a good move forward,

I was, I was shocked to learn that not that long ago, that there were

microplastics right in the toothpaste

and we ordered some tooth tablets, but they had to come

from the UK and we're in Canada.

It took forever to get this bottle, but it was a great big bottle and it it's

still going two years later or something, but You know, then there's the whole

question of, , you know, does it work?

Are you supposed to have fluoride, , like there's all those questions and

then, um, we've tried the tooth PA like the pace that you can buy in

the health food store that's made with clay and things like that.

And, uh, and that works, but it, again, it's more expensive than the

ones that That are mass produced.

That aren't good for the planet, right?

It's the same old issue.

yeah.

And I think the, the they're small companies very often, so their margins are

much more difficult to, , , to achieve.

And as a result, they're trying to work around that by creating a

subscription model for their business.

But I contacted, um, a tablet company a few weeks back, uh, Interested

to find out what they offered to the dental profession, dental

professionals, dental practices.

And I just haven't had a response back and I've had that happen a few times

over the years just don't respond.

So I think they're clearly wanting to go direct to the consumer

because that's where they feel , the proper profit is for them.

Yeah, but also because, um, there's small

companies and there's startups.

And so this is something I see a lot that small companies, the

founders spend a lot of time, energy on developing their product and

don't really take care of sales.

, there's different sales channels they can get to.

So I don't think it's because they are not very interested.

Maybe it's because they are not very well organized as

well.

Yeah, yeah.

That, I think that's absolutely right.

Yeah.

, and , some of the earlier tablets didn't have fluoride at all.

And I.

I always feel that fluoride , is a good thing , to have in

a, a tooth cleaning product.

And, um, if people are worried about fluoride, I often

say, well, do you drink tea?

Cause most people do.

, the average tea leaf contains, , a thousand parts.

Perme fluoride, just the same as toothpaste.

So there's a huge amount of fluoride in it.

It does favorably suck up fluoride.

And although that isn't available fluoride to your mouth, when you drink

tea, , there is a reasonable amount in terms of the volume you're drinking.

So you.

Could probably end up taking in more fluoride per year by drinking tea

than you would buy, using toothpaste

There you go, you learn something every day.

I didn't know that

Yeah.

But , since you, mentioned that there's small plastic, like small

PLA pieces of plastic in toothpaste.

I looked at , all my toothpaste tube and none of them mentioned that.

So can you confirm that it's an old

toothpaste that we used.

There's usually something like, um, polyethylene or something of those,

those sorts of, uh, words that are used.

So it'll be a chemical name that's used, so they won't say microplastics.

Um, but it'll be the word if you see the word poly and, uh, YL,

those are telling you that there's some kind of plastic ingredient in.

But that's,

that's really bad because there's there no way that microplastic can be recycled.

it's a little like, uh, people use the term CI rate instead of

citric acid, because they don't want, they want to hide the idea

that there's an acid in something.

, so you, , you kind of just use your terminology it's there, but yeah,

you've gotta know what you're looking.

So what can the regular person do um, is is there a better way to

talk to your, your dental provider about this, uh, as a patient, um,

like what, what can each person listening to this take

action on.

I think there are.

Different levels.

Uh, us as patients and I talk about me cleaning my teeth.

I can make a move to using toothpaste tablets.

If I do that, then I will use, uh, one with fluoride in it.

Um, there are, uh, flosses that, uh, are made out of corn starch and corn fiber.

So those are biodegradable and, uh, . , toothbrushes that we can get,

which don't, uh, don't use plastic or, or at least if you, you can

move in the right direction and not use as much plastic talking to your

dentist or your orthodontist about it.

And it, again, we go back to the carbon monk and their children's ARMAC

and how, uh, we want to encourage children to talk to their parents.

And if, if children are, um, uh, thinking about this.

You know, they can talk to their parents and that helps with the family.

And this can all be raised with the orthodontist as well.

So

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