I’ve been thinking about upgrading my electric toothbrush since my current crappy one is basically on death’s door after a couple years of use. Is there like a toothbrush equivalent of a Toyota Hilux I should know about?
SURI. They’re made to be able to be repaired so you won’t have to replace it, and the heads are made with vegetable based plastics that you mail to them to actually get recycled.
The battery lasts for weeks and weeks, it has a UV sterilizing travel case and is the best electric toothbrush I’ve owned.
From their website:
Every toothbrush you’ve ever owned still exists.
Each year 4 billion toothbrushes are thrown away; enough to circle the earth 12 times.
Which is why we need to take toothbrush design back to first principles. If we can do our best to make each component reusable or recyclable, we can do more with less.
I have an Oral-B, and the head replacements are CAD$45. I’d get this, but I feel like I’d be wasting the toothbrush I already bought. 😞
But surely the carbon footprint of mailing the heads back to be recycled does more harm to the planet than not recycling the heads? Seems like a bit of green thumb theatre.
Like when everyone a couple years ago were collecting their plastic bread tags to send to that guy in Africa who was turning them into recycled plastic bricks to make a house. Seriously, just bin the bread tags and send him $10, you’ll save yourself $15 in international shipping costs, and he cound buy 1000 bread tags, or even better a bunch of pre-made bricks, and we don’t have to be mailing our trash all around the world.
you dont mail them back all at once, you collect them and send them back in the envelopes they provide.
they are very, very light.
mail trucks go from my community mailbox to the city centre, then to the other hub whether or not my few ounces of brush heads are in there.
Nothing is perfect. Take biodegradable trash bags for example. There’s a higher carbon cost to make those than thin petro-chemical regular bags. You need to weigh up landfill waste vs energy costs with everything, but with more energy. Same with mining for lithium for EV batteries.
Nothing is perfect. This, I believe, is a better choice.
