Zero Waste & Vegan Dental Care That Is Better for Your Teeth

I am nowhere near completely zero waste, but I aim to be less wasteful. Zero waste for dental care most usually means a wooden toothbrush, homemade toothpaste and compostable animal derived floss. I don’t think this is the best combination, not only because it’s not vegan but also because it can be a harmful choice for your teeth.

Toothbrush
But I too use a wooden toothbrush. Mine at the moment is a Humblebrush, they are now also available in normal supermarkets in Helsinki! I remember when I was looking for a recycled plastic or compostable toothbrush and couldn’t find one anywhere. Multicoloured sporty looking plastic Pepsodents and Golgates were all there was. Now there are several more sustainable and stylish options.

Toothpaste
Homemade toothpaste doesn’t contain fluoride. Most store bought plastic free options have the same problem. While fluoride is toxic in too large quantities, a bit of it is good for your dental health and strongly recommended by my dentist. In some places where fluoride is added into drinking water there is more worry about getting too much of it, but in Helsinki water doesn’t contain any. So I have been using packaged Urtekram mint toothpaste which is vegan and great and also really inexpensive and available in my local supermarkets in Helsinki. But I did manage to get some fluoride containing toothpaste tablets from Original Unverpact in Germany. Wish someone sold them in Finland too.

Floss
The most common zero waste floss is made of silk and beeswax. And vegan options are mostly single use plastic. But I just found Pearlbar flosspicks that are biodegredable and vegan. They also look really good, being all black.  As they are made of biodegradable plastic they’re not the perfect option, but still the best I have found so far.

Xylitol
My dentist told me to chew xylitol after every meal. I found only one product that is packed without a plastic wrapper and doesn’t contain any insect ingredients, this. I was going to feature it here but now it seems that it has disappeared from the stores. Has anyone seen it in Helsinki, or know if any bulk sweets sections sell unpackaged xylitol sweets here?

I know some people use different alternatives and no fluoride and have great teeth, but as I have suffered from quite bad dental problems I wanted to try to find options that are in line with my dentist’s instructions, and also vegan and even as zero waste as possible. As these were hard criteria to fill, I wanted to share my findings with others who might be looking for the same things.

Daniel