Dental hygiene is important. The health of your mouth and gums affects not only your mouth but other areas of your health; Gum disease is thought to be a contributor to your risk of stroke, heart attacks and diabetes amongst other health risks. But just as important to me as dental hygiene is the impact on the environment. Fortunately there are some good eco-friendly dental care products available which you can normally find in whole food shops or online, or you can even make some of them yourself.
Eco-Friendly Dental Care
The reason I’m converting to eco-friendly dental care is not so much the ingredients found in standard toothpaste and mouthwash, although that is a factor, but rather the amount of plastic that is used. Many dental products can now be recycled through Terracycle but my preference is always to reduce the amount I have to recycle or throw away.
The items below contain no plastic at all and can be bought in glass jars, tins or, in some cases, in cardboard.
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Eco-Friendly Toothbrushes
If you haven’t heard about bamboo toothbrushes yet where have you been?
The number of plastic toothbrushes that end up in landfill is unbelievable so finding any alternative to the usual plastic toothbrush is a good idea!
You’ll find all sorts of bamboo toothbrushes for sale but not all of them are 100% plastic free. Many of them contain bristles derived from plastic, but you can get some that don’t. Just read the description carefully, otherwise you’ll end up with bristles which you have to remove and dispose of in your rubbish before recycling the handle.
Eco-Friendly Toothpaste
Homemade Toothpaste
When my usual brand of toothpaste ran out I decided I would make homemade toothpaste. There are numerous blogs out there with various different recipes for homemade toothpaste. I scoured them all as I wanted to keep it simple. The main ingredients tended to be baking soda and coconut oil with some kind of essential oil to help with the flavour.
The recipe I tried was probably the simplest of them all. I ignored most of the ‘optional ingredients’ listed and stuck to the very basics.
Simple homemade toothpaste recipe
2 tablespoons coconut oil
1-2 tablespoons baking soda
10 drops of peppermint oil (optional)
It was pretty simple to make. The only time consuming part was waiting for the coconut oil to melt. Once the oil has melted you just mix up the ingredients and then store the mixture in a glass jar (with a lid) waiting to be used.
Conclusion – I tried it, it was foul. It was a strange consistency, I had to use a spoon to get some of the mixture out of the jar and onto my toothbrush. My teeth felt clean but I’ll be very honest, my mouth didn’t feel very fresh at all. One of the best things about brushing your teeth usually is how minty and fresh your mouth feels afterwards. I won’t give up on it entirely because I’m sure a big part of this is just getting used to something different, but for my morning teeth brushing I’m going to need something a bit more refreshing for now.
Eco-Friendly Toothpaste / Tooth Powder / Tooth Tablets
My homemade toothpaste didn’t quite work for me so I decided I would try a shop bought eco-friendly toothpaste instead. As far as I can tell there aren’t a huge number of companies producing eco-friendly toothpaste at the moment. One company that you will come across though is Georganics. They have a whole range of eco-friendly dental hygiene products available and several different flavours of toothpaste to try.
Georganics Toothpaste
Because of my homemade toothpaste failure I decided I would buy a more traditional style and went for their peppermint flavour. I was able to buy mine from my local whole food shop but the whole range can be bought online.
You can buy 60ml or 120ml sizes. Other flavours you can buy include Spearmint, Tea Tree, Red Mandarin and ‘Pure’.
Georganics Toothpowder
If you feel like you want to try something a bit different why not try some ‘tooth powder’ instead. Most toothpowders are activated charcoal (read more about that at the end of the article) although other flavours are available.
I’ve used both activated charcoal tooth powder and the spearmint toothpowder pictures, and although it’s a bit strange at first I found it more pleasant than the toothpaste.
Tooth Tablets
One of the newest eco-friendly toothpaste alternatives appearing these days are tooth tablets. Particularly good for travelling you can just pop a tablet in your mouth and once it’s dissolved you can brush your teeth for the normal 2 minutes.
Georganics and EcoLiving both sell Tooth Tablets.
- Chew 1 tablet in your mouth and let it dissolve
- Brush as usual for 2 minutes
- Spit out and rinse well
Toothsoap
Let’s just be honest, toothsoap sounds vile. It comes in a container that resembles a deodorant stick, so that’s already a little odd for me. You apply the soap to your wet toothbrush and then brush as normal.
Personally I’m not sure I’ll try this one as I struggle enough with oil pulling and my homemade oil and baking soda toothpaste. So using soap?…
Literally washing my mouth out with soap and water might be something my mother still thinks I should do, but I’m not so keen.
Eco-Friendly Mouthwash
Finding a liquid mouthwash that doesn’t come in a plastic bottle is hard. I haven’t yet found one that you can buy that isn’t oil based. There are however eco-friendly mouth wash tablets that you can buy or you can make liquid mouthwashes yourself.
Homemade Mouthwash
I found this homemade mouthwash recipe and it sounds palatable. The only problem with it is how much of a faff it would be to make this every day…
The comments under the article all talk about how quickly the mixture goes off if you make it in bulk, so making it fresh would seem sensible, but would probably become tiresome quite quickly.
To make 1 cup of mouthwash use:
1/4 Cup of Aloe Vera Juice or 3 Medium Leaves
1 Cup of Distilled Water
2 Teaspoons of Xylitol
2 Teaspoons of Baking Soda
You put all your ingredients in a blender and ensure it’s mixed well. You can also add some drops of peppermint essential oil to help the flavour and give you that fresh feeling.
Oil Pulling Mouthwash
You may have heard of oil pulling before, but if not it’s simply using oil to swish around your mouth and pull through your teeth. Coconut oil is the usual one to use but it tends to be in a solid form. Get a spoonful, pop it in your mouth, wait for it to become liquid then swish it around for between 5 and 10 minutes.
It’s as unpleasant as it sounds to have a lump of solid oil in your mouth!
Fortunately you can buy an oil pulling mouthwash through Georganics, and it does come in plastic free packaging. I would say that this is probably nicer to use than just coconut oil, but I haven’t yet tried it myself.
They sell spearmint, peppermint, tea tree, red mandarin, activated charcoal and pure flavours.
Mouthwash Tablets
If the idea of swishing oil around your mouth doesn’t appeal to you but you still want an eco-friendly plastic free mouthwash then maybe tablets are right for you. You also only need to gargle them for 30 seconds.
With these mouthwash tablets you just pop one tablet into 20ml of water and wait for it to dissolve before gargling for around 30 seconds. Much easier than oil pulling!
Georganics do the following flavours; Peppermint, spearmint, tea tree, orange (for kids), wild thyme and activated charcoal.
Explore more mouthwash tablets
Eco-Friendly Dental Floss / Interdental Brush
After brushing and mouthwash the only thing left to talk about is dental floss. The biggest problem with most dental flosses is the plastic packaging it comes in, although the floss itself is normally made from nylon as well.
Thankfully Georganics have come to the rescue yet again with dental floss that comes in a glass dispenser that can be reused when purchasing floss refills. Bambaw offer dental floss in stainless steel and Hydrophil sell interdental brushes.
Explore Dental Floss / Interdental Brushes
There you have it, it’s possible to have a completely zero waste eco-friendly dental care routine. If you’re just starting out on your ‘journey’ to reduce your waste I’d suggest starting off with a bamboo toothbrush and a peppermint or spearmint toothpaste. Once you’ve got used to a slightly different kind of toothpaste maybe you can try making your own (good luck!).
Finally I’d just like to clarify that this isn’t a sponsored post by Georganics, they just so happen to have the best overall range of eco-friendly dental hygiene products that I’ve found.
Activated Charcoal – what is it and what does it do?
You can buy toothpastes, powders and more with activated charcoal, even toothbrushes with activated charcoal bristles. So what is it and what does it do?
“Activated carbon, also called activated charcoal, is a form of carbon processed to have small, low-volume pores that increase the surface area available for adsorption or chemical reactions”. – Wikipedia
It’s claimed, by some, that activated charcoal is great for whitening your teeth, you’ll also find plenty of people stating that there isn’t any evidence to support this claim.
“There’s no formal evidence that activated charcoal whitens teeth.
Observations suggest that using activated charcoal on your teeth is effective in absorbing plaque and other compounds that stain teeth. Meaning, the chemical properties of activated charcoal is a natural teeth whitener. It doesn’t neutralize the toxins—it binds to them, resulting in whiter teeth.” – Dr Steven Lin
Ultimately until more testing has been done it’s up to you whether you want to use activated charcoal for teeth whitening or not.
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