Personal care products generate billions of pieces of plastic waste every year. I shared 21 simple bathroom swaps to help you go green. Some of these swaps were easy. Others, like plastic-free dental care, were more challenging. Today, I’m diving a little deeper into the changes I’ve made to reduce single-use plastic in my dental care routine.

This post was originally published in September 2021 and updated in October 2024.

Dental health is closely tied to our overall health. According to the Mayo Clinic, poor oral health can be linked to many health issues including cardiovascular disease, pneumonia, and pregnancy and birth complications. That’s why, for a long time, I rejected zero-waste swaps that could compromise my dental health.

But there’s good news. New and innovative products are appearing all the time. I’ve finally managed to eliminate single-use plastic in my oral health routine, without taking unnecessary risk. Read on to learn more.

Note: This is NOT a paid endorsement of any of these products.

Toothbrush

Let’s start with the toothbrush. Most toothbrushes are made from non-recyclable plastic. Considering about 3.5 billion toothbrushes are sold each year worldwide, that’s a lot of plastic headed for the landfill.

I openly admit that replacing my plastic toothbrush wasn’t easy for me. A few years ago, I received a bamboo toothbrush as a Christmas gift and I hated it! The wooden texture felt really uncomfortable in my mouth.

Over the years, though, every time I threw out a plastic toothbrush, I felt guilty. I knew I had to do better. About a year ago, I decided to give bamboo another try. I found some bamboo toothbrushes packaged in cardboard, and made a commitment to give them a fair shot. It took a few weeks, but I was able to adjust to the feel of a bamboo toothbrush.

Now, the downside of bamboo toothbrushes is many of them contain nylon bristles. Unlike bamboo, nylon isn’t compostable so, if your toothbrush has nylon bristles and you want to compost your toothbrush, you’ll need to pluck them out before composting.

This bamboo toothbrush I found from Etee has a replaceable head and plant-based bristles.

Even if you’re not composting, you can feel good that a bamboo toothbrush will decompose in landfill within about 10 years. That plastic toothbrush, on the other hand, will take about 500 years to decompose.

Let’s keep in touch! Join my mailing list and I’ll email you when I add a new post.

Toothpaste

Like toothbrushes, toothpaste tubes are made of non-recyclable plastic. Early in my journey to reduce waste and eliminate single-use plastic, I explored plastic-free toothpaste options. I did find some, but they were expensive and not widely available. More importantly for me, they didn’t contain fluoride—something I consider important to good dental hygiene.

I was always intrigued by toothpaste tablets. When I placed an order from Lush last summer, they sent me a free sample of their Boom Toothy Tabs. I decided to at least give them a try even though they didn’t contain fluoride. Imagine my surprise when I opened up the container to find small black tablets.

For me, there’s something about brushing my teeth with something black and fruit-flavoured that just doesn’t feel quite right. Much as I appreciated the free sample, this was not the product for me.

Something to “Smyle” about

Then, a friend told me about Smyle brush mints with fluoride. I decided to give them a try. You can read my full review here. Like the toothbrush swap, this one took a bit of getting used to but, now that I’m used to them, I wouldn’t switch back. Smyle’s brush mints are a definite winner in my books.

The downside to Smyle is they’re shipped from the Netherlands. Although they offer carbon-neutral shipping, I was on the lookout for some Canadian-made toothpaste tabs. When I found Etee, I thought I’d give their Minty Vanilla Fluoride Chewpaste a try.

The chewpaste was okay and I found it to have a couple of advantages over Smyle—it foams better, and it’s shipped from Toronto. On the downside, though, is the flavour. It has a strong vanilla flavour with just a hint of mint. Like the Boom Toothy Tabs from Lush, I don’t like the sweet taste. It’s a shame because I love so many of Etee’s products, and I really wanted to like these.

So, I’ll stick with Smyle for now and mitigate the international shipping impact by ordering larger quantities.

Dental floss

The last item in my dental care routine is dental floss. Most popular brands of dental floss are packaged in plastic containers that aren’t recyclable in most municipal recycling programs. At one time, you could buy refills for the large containers of floss but I haven’t seen those refills in stores for a long time. Yet another example of convenience winning out over common sense.

Packaging aside, there’s the floss itself. Most best-selling brands are made from nylon. As I mentioned earlier, nylon is not biodegradable so that nylon floss will take many years to decompose.

But there are better options! One of my Plastic Free July finds this year was Etee’s silk dental floss. It comes in a refillable stainless-steel container and it’s fully biodegradable. And Eco-Dent makes vegan waxed dental floss in cardboard packaging.

At long last, I think I’ve managed to achieve plastic-free dental care. These changes save about 20 pieces of plastic from landfill just from my own personal use. It doesn’t sound like a lot but when you multiply that by billions of people…

Have you discovered any plastic-free dental care products? Tell us about them below.