This September, there are a lot of efforts to clean up the world, with the Great British Beach Clean (that’s with the Marine Conservation Society, the 19th to 28th), and World Clean Up Day on the 20th.
A lot of the items that are cleared away will contain or be plastic.
It’s good to see companies doing something about that to reduce our plastic needs and use. Enter Georganics, which was born out of realising that we all participate in a significant issue – that of plastic waste.
Good dental hygiene matters - but so does the disposal of toothpaste tubes and toothbrushes
Georganics sell products for good dental hygiene, such as toothbrushes, toothpaste and dental floss. But there’s more to them than that. They discovered that figures for materials and cosmetics used for oral hygiene are horrifying: it's really difficult to recycle toothpaste tubes. 3,000 tonnes of waste for toothpaste tubes and about 5 billion toothbrushes go to landfill. They realised that most conventional plastic toothpaste tubes can’t be recycled.
Given that people brush their teeth every day – and not just once – that all adds up to an awful lot of plastic toothpaste tubes.
Four goals were established:
To minimise waste across all forms of oral care products
To create natural, effective oral care products
To promote awareness and encourage daily habit evolution
To protect and respect our planet
Ultimately, Georganics wanted to give people choice, and make it easier to keep going with sustainable choices with ease. So many lifestyle choices are hard to keep up after the initial burst of action – it’s a bit like finding an exercise you enjoy doing that you know you’ll keep doing instead of giving up after a few initial bursts of enthusiasm. It has to last the course.
Packaging matters
Of course, it’s not just the product itself that matters but the packaging it comes in – and Georganics have information on its site about how aluminium is recycled, for instance, and why they use recycled aluminium for their toothpaste tubes, and why it’s beneficial to the environment. Aluminium tubes are widely accepted in recycling programmes – it can be reused for another purpose. You can find out more about that here.
There are also tips on how you can replace plastic in the bathroom. I use a shampoo that doesn’t come in a plastic container and use a soap bar too. Georganics have lots of ways we can reduce the plastic we have in our bathrooms.
There are always things we can do to reduce our impact on the environment and planet and produce less waste. Tidying up after us is a great thing to do – but wouldn’t it be better if there was less plastic waste from the outset?
To show they mean what they say about reducing plastic, Georganics have introduced a Zero to Landfill Scheme. It means you can send back any Georganics products and components which can’t be composted or recycled at home, such as sonic toothbrush heads, sonic toothbrush handles and beechwood toothbrush heads. And Georganic customers can send them these products from anywhere in the world!
There’s more information about how to do this here.
Give it a go!
Georganics work with First Mile, using their Zero Waste boxes to recycle toothbrush heads and sonic toothbrush components. Georganics fill up the Zero Waste boxes with products for recycling, and then send the boxes to Terra Cycle in the UK for recycling.
Georganics have a Travel Friendly Pack, which gives you the chance to try out some of their products and see how you get on! It’s got a Beechwood Toothbrush, Toothpaste Tablets and Floss (Spearmint) – why not treat yourself next time you’re away on a break and give it a go?