There was a big buzz around plastic straws being the problem of our whole plastic pollution problems. Restaurants and pubs quickly swapped their plastic straws for paper or metal ones.
A few years ago, when visiting Bournemouth for the first time, in a ‘hipster’ Mexican restaurant I encountered metal straws for the very first time. I was surprised and quite glad of this advancement. I had this great idea that the world (businesses included) is moving forward with more environmentally friendly options.
That was 4 years ago and so far the most prominent of these options were the straws, not much else. Sure, supermarkets pledged to quit packaging vegetables in plastic bags but those pledges were an advancement that should have bene made ages ago. Most European countries don’t package produce as there is no point to it. And yes, I know, that the precious veg will last longer when it’s in a plastic bag but somehow millions of people across most parts of Europe manage well without plastic packaging. Add to that that in some parts of the UK, clear plastic is not being recycled and that recycling plants end up chucking most of the recycling away or dumping it on third world countries. The environment won’t last much longer when cooking one meal fills a recycling bin halfway up.
Nonetheless, it got me thinking – what else is a huge waste of plastic. I was going through the house when I stop at the bathroom. I looked through cosmetic items, which is a whole other topic… and my eyes steered to the item we use a couple of times a day that we replace multiple times a year – the toothbrush.
Come to think of it, I always felt strange throwing out the whole toothbrush when I needed to buy a new one. This huge chunk of plastic thrown into the bin with no hope of recycling it for a new life. This plastic bit is only used to hold the actual useful bit of the toothbrush and we just throw it away because that is just the norm.
I’d argue that that’s what the cosmetic companies want. Otherwise they would follow the razor in terms of replacing the head of the item. There is probably a really good marketing reason for this . Buying a new toothbrush gives you a nice feeling as you are gifting yourself with a fresh new item. They also want you to purchase the overpriced electric toothbrush which has replacable brush heads and putting a manual toothbrush with the same functionality would most likely bring the electric product down – make it less valuable to the consumer.
What grinds my gears is that people went crazy over plastic straws and whatnot and there’s not a single squeak about this daily product. Yes, wooden toothbrushes are coming into fashion but (ignoring the abismal quality and their price) they will still take a long long time to degrade.
We need to make big companies be accountable and push them to change their assortiment of products to be more environmentally friendly and to produce products that make sense for us and for nature!
Kat's Krunch 