Over a 150 millions plastic toothbrushes in the UK - and around 4.7 billions worldwide - are dumped in landfill each year. That's a lot of non-recyclable plastic waste. Synthetic plastic takes centuries to decompose. We have outlined the dangers of plastic pollution in a previous blog post. 

When it comes to sustainability, composting is a great option. Rather than dumping waste in landfills, compostable waste is used to fertilise the soil. Not a lot of businesses offer compostable packaging. We are happy to confirm that we do.

Although it has a long way to go, compostable packaging is starting to catch on. More and more businesses are adopting it. Sainsbury's have already made hundreds of their products available in compostable packaging. Marks & Spencer announced that all of their packing will be recyclable by 2022.

Composting takes sustainability to the next level

There is a big difference between biodegradability and compostability. If something is biodegradable, that only means it will breakdown over a period of time. But how long? That could be a year or it could be a thousand years.

Georganics's product packaging is certified compostable,as it is the vegetable based ink we usefor printing. If you do your own composting at home, you can add our packaging to your brown waste. If, like most people, you don’t, then you could put it in a composting bin. Up to 90% of the product will breakdown within 6 months.

To picture how effective our compostable packaging is, you could try a little experiment (or just ready the next paragraph).

Add our packaging to a compost pile along with the rest of your compostable waste. Return to the compost pile in a month, and look at the result. The compostable products will have broken down into small pieces, or disappeared entirely.

How we did last year

In 2017 we sold around 50 thousand bamboo toothbrushes. That's a lot of plastic waste avoided. We're also reducing our carbon footprint: all of our packaging is made in the UK, by a local company that have been producing sustainable packaging for over 40 years. As of today, we’ve decided to ditch the use of plastic on all our products and packaging (aside from the electric toothbrush and bristles). We're one step closer to being 100% recyclable.