Recycle Tooth Brushes

Recycle Your Old Tooth Brushes, Tooth Paste & Floss Holders

Working Together To Help The Planet

Stafford based dental practice, Smile Style Dental Care Centre has teamed up with the UK recycle company Terracycle to create a new scheme whereby patients bring into the practice all of their used oral care products for recycling. The scheme is being developed in the practice and the team are proud to be the very first dental practice in the Midlands to be taking part.

Here’s Richard to explain how…

There is growing concern for our environment with an ever-increasing number of products and packaging going into waste land. Used oral care products are no different. But here’s where together we can make a dent in that waste. Over 100 million toothbrushes in the UK get thrown away each year with many ending up in landfill or being incinerated. Imagine how many tubes of toothpaste each household gets through a year and then how many households there are in the UK.

Approximately 713 million was spent on toothpaste and toothbrushes in 2013 and over 1 billion in oral care products overall. This figure is expected to grow by 22% by 2018 reaching 1.3 billion! The mind boggles to think of all these items then lying on rubbish dumps, on beaches and in our waters. We’ve all seen the images of birds lying deceased on beaches with tops from such tubes in their stomachs. We need to reduce this in as many ways as possible for the sake of the future of our planet.

What about if on your next trip to the dentist you were able to bring in your old toothbrushes, toothpaste tubes, floss holders, electric toothbrush heads, tepes and tongue scrapers? All of which will be taken to a specialist centre where all those items get stripped down and each piece re-cycled. Smile Style have invested in a specialist collection container for their patients to do exactly that.

Richard Howarth, Principle dentist and owner says “I feel so strongly that we should try and leave the world in a better place, that we have to look at all the things we use. It is not just ok throw it away. From manufacturers to retailers and end users, we have a responsibility to ensure waste plastics which can survive in the environment for 1000’s of years are disposed of and where possible recycled.

This is why I am paying for our clients to have the opportunity to simply recycle their used health products. We are also working to try and make this a reality in all dental practices and trying to get universal support from manufacturers”.