PW Tip 3: Recycling a Bamboo Toothbrush

Bamboo toothbrushes are easy to recycle. You can reuse, repurpose or compost them. I keep one intact toothbrush in my toolkit and use it when a very small brush is needed for a task. The other toothbrushes get their bristles cut off, and then can be used as a garden seedling marker, as a popsicle stick or add it to your kindling in the winter, and use it in your fireplace or wood stove. It’s free of toxic gases and only releases carbon dioxide.

There are many reasons why it’s a good idea to use a natural bamboo toothbrush:

·       A plastic toothbrush can take up to a thousand years to decompose.

·       50,000,000 lbs. of toothbrushes are thrown in US landfills yearly. Some modern toothbrushes are designed with bigger handles, which means the volume of plastics will only rise.

·       In Australia, more than 30,000,000 toothbrushes are thrown away in landfill every year.

·       These plastics are not simply going into landfills but also into our bodies of water. There are lots of reports about our marine animals dying from plastic ingestion.

·       Non-renewable energy from plastic toothbrushes came from non-renewable fossil fuels.