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June 3, 2021
If you’re looking for a sustainable electric toothbrush, then worry no more! In this post, we’re going to look at the most eco-friendly electric toothbrush options around. These greener electric toothbrushes will help you look after your teeth without costing the Earth.
Table of Contents
Electric Toothbrush: The Issues
There’s 2 main environmental issues when it comes to toothbrushes:
- The ‘Embodied Energy’ used to create the toothbrush in the first place.
- Any ongoing waste from changing the toothbrushes or the heads.
Although some manual toothbrushes – for example, bamboo ones – have a lower embodied energy, they may not be the right tool for the job. And keeping your mouth healthy is a very important job. So first and foremost, we always recommend consulting your dentist on what type of toothbrush you should be using.
If your dentist recommends an electric toothbrush – and most of them tend to – then it’s good to try and choose one with long battery life, and with lower embodied energy and waste.
Embodied Energy
It’s difficult to find hard numbers on the amount of energy that goes into actually manufacturing something like an electric toothbrush. If we do manage to get some data on the manufacturing process then we’ll update this article.
For now, though, we’re assuming that the amount of energy used is fairly equal for any electric toothbrush – as they all have a similar basic design. In which case, the next most important criteria are where that toothbrush comes from, and how it gets here.
Products that are shipped from China have a bad reputation, but shipping is actually the most carbon-efficient way of transporting goods. In fact, it’s generally more efficient to ship something from China to the UK than it is to drive it from Europe.
However, this also depends a bit on whether or not your product has to travel a long way by road before it even gets to the coast for shipping. These things are tricky to quantify, but a lower carbon footprint for shipping is definitely one of the criteria we’ll be using to judge our electric toothbrushes.
Low Waste
The other big area to consider here is how much waste might be generated from having to replace your toothbrush heads, and whether or not the body itself is recyclable. Not only are some plastics still non-recyclable, but the heads have a manufacturing footprint too, whether it’s the energy used to run the machinery or the oil used to make plastics.
Natural materials are generally preferable to plastic, since they’re less energy-intensive to produce and will biodegrade over time. So we’ll definitely be looking for electric toothbrushes that use as much natural material as possible too.
Let’s look at some electric toothbrushes that meet our energy and waste criteria!
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Eco-Friendly Electric Toothbrushes
New Top Pick (2023): The SURI Sonic Electric Toothbrush
Fully repairable/recyclable, no ongoing waste, outstanding design and performance
Move over, Fayet: there’s a new kid on the block for 2023. The SURI Sonic Toothbrush is undoubtedly the most sustainable electric toothbrush we’ve come across. Not only that, it’s slick, high-performance, and features the most innovative design we’ve seen in a while. Finally, someone made a toothbrush for our times!
Where to start with this masterpiece? First, it’s fully recyclable – not only the heads but the body too. The SURI is designed to be taken apart, and the company will recycle it if you send it back to them (after many years of faithful service no doubt!). Recycling is a last resort, as the SURI is also designed to be fully repairable.
The toothbrush heads are plant-based (made from corn starch and castor oil) and the company can also recycle these if you send them back via Freepost. Even the packaging is fully recyclable! The SURI also boasts a superb battery life of 30 days – and more time between charges means a smaller carbon footprint.
Not only does SURI boast impressive eco chops, but it’s also got some innovative and game-changing design features too. The self-cleaning travel hard case is sleek, practical, and multi-use – be gone, crummy plastic cases! It also has both a clean and polish mode, and a stylish magnetic mirror mount to keep the brush up off the surfaces.
Disclaimer: I use SURI personally, and I love it! The battery life is, if anything, understated – I am still on my first charge with no end in sight. I love the innovation that’s gone into every part of the design, and the clean feels great too (admittedly, this is my first sonic brush so have no basis to compare).
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Not convinced by the SURI? You can check out last year’s top performer, and the rest of our picks, below.
2022’s Top Pick: Fayet Bamboo Electric Toothbrush
Sustainable materials, great battery life, and little ongoing waste
If you’re not sold on the SURI, or just want some other options, check out our other picks for the best eco-friendly electric toothbrush. This Fayet Electric Toothbrush was our number one pick for 2022, mostly because of the natural bamboo at the core of its design. Although zero-waste replaceable heads are becoming more common, it’s still a rare enough find that the design of the Fayet really stands out. The heads are bamboo, the body is – unfortunately – still plastic, but painted to look like Bamboo.
The need to make the toothbrush waterproof, because of the electronics inside, means you can’t have an all-bamboo design here. But the bamboo head still makes the Fayet a great choice for minimising the plastic waste in your life.
The environmental benefits don’t stop there though. The Fayet also has a good battery life, which means less energy consumption overall. Using less energy is always a good thing, as the U.K.’s electricity grid is still not 100% clean (yet!).
Although we couldn’t find any data on where the Fayet is manufactured, we suspect it’s most likely in China. Although shipping something this far across the globe isn’t ideal, we think it’s still preferable to using a plane or truck, even over a shorter distance. This, combined with the use of biodegradable bamboo, gives the Fayet our number one spot.
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Philips Sonicare 4300 Electric Toothbrush
Bamboo replacement heads and excellent battery life
While the Philips Sonicare 4300 is made of plastic, there are bamboo replacement heads you can buy that make it a more sustainable choice. Replacement heads account for most of the plastic waste involved in an electric toothbrush, so the fact you can get bamboo heads counts for a lot. These Sonicare Bamboo replaceable brush heads should help you protect both your teeth and the environment.
It’s tricky to find information on where Philips products are manufactured, but their toothbrushes seem to come from China. That puts the amount of shipping carbon roughly on par with the Fayet above.
Oral-B Pro 2 2500
Recyclable toothbrush heads, vegan & cruelty-free
The Oral-B Pro 2 2500 isn’t quite as eco-friendly as our first two options, but it is able to use recyclable toothbrush heads. Although it’s preferable to reduce plastic – rather than recycle it – some toothbrushes don’t have the option to recycle the heads at all. So these recyclable replacement heads still get the Oral-B a place on our list.
You do need to send the toothbrush heads away through the post to be recycled, so it’s worth waiting until you have a whole bunch of them. That way you can send them all at once and minimise the amount of carbon involved.
Oral-B toothbrushes are all made in Germany, which might make it seem as though it’s the most climate-friendly shipping option here. That’s not necessarily the case though. A lot of European freight tends to be carried by trucks on roads for significant distances, and we suspect it would be a similar story when it comes to your Oral-B toothbrush’s journey.
It’s a bit counterintuitive, but being carried in a truck – even over a shorter distance – would be less efficient and cause higher emissions.
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Ready To Get Brushing?
That’s it for our list folks, what did you think of our picks? Is there an eco-friendly electric toothbrush out there that we missed? Let us know in the comments! And don’t forget to check out the rest of our blog for more eco-friendly tips, tricks, news, and reviews. Until next time.
