Toothbrushes, mouthwash, floss… The list goes on and the excess plastic quickly piles up in your bathroom cabinets. Over 264 million plastic toothbrushes are thrown away every year in the UK. Taking over 1000 years to decompose, each toothbrush has a detrimental effect on the environment, filling up landfill sites, polluting our oceans and disrupting marine life. We sat down with Georganics to find out more about eliminating plastic from oral hygiene…
We are Georganics, we make natural and sustainable alternatives to mainstream oral care. We’ve been working for the past 7 years on developing safe, effective and more sustainable everyday oral care products that aren’t just good for you, they’re good for the planet. We work with nature, using effective ingredients that come from pure, natural, organic sources. But we also acknowledge the world that we’re in, and that’s why we’re also committed to using our business as a force for good by creating schemes and solutions to the plastic pollution crisis.
How Georganics began…
At the beginning our founder Alex was working hard at his city job when he had that lightbulb moment, that moment we all get when we realise that things have got to change. Alex had been struggling with poor oral health, despite doing everything the“ right” way we’ve all been taught by dentists – using high-fluoride toothpaste and mouthwashes with alcohol in to try to reduce his unexplained cavities. He decided to change his lifestyle and change to more natural health products. Natural soaps, deodorants and moisturisers weren’t a problem to locate, but toothpaste proved near impossible to find. So, being a bit of a stubborn type, Alex left his job to make his own. Georganics was born and has grown from a tiny stall at a farmer’s market to one of Europe’s most trusted brands of genuinely natural oral healthcare. The sustainability mantra followed very naturally and has become the most single most important aspect for us when it comes to decision making.
Their mission…
There is a global crisis when it comes to plastic. The world produces 381 million tonnes in plastic waste yearly and up to 12.7 million of those tonnes get dumped straight into our magnificent oceans. Unfortunately only a small number of corporations are responsible for the majority of it and until they are held accountable we can only do what we can to help. In the U.S every year roughly 1 BILLION plastic toothpaste tubes and another 1 BILLION plastic toothbrushes go to landfill every single year so our industry is still very guilty and we want to show people there is another way. There is no need for plastic in this industry anymore and we alongside incredible like-minded brands like Little Soap Company aim to show the path to a cleaner bathroom and planet, one person at a time.
At the moment we create an alternative to the mainstream but the goal is for sustainable products to become the mainstream. Until that day arrives our work will always be to improve our products and packaging whilst having as minimal impact on the planet as possible. We don’t send anything to landfill and neither do our customers. We like to focus on the community aspect of our customers seeing them as sustainability heroes and championing their ideas. Nothing else matters if there is no future for the planet.
How we can all make a difference…
People switching singular items may not feel like they’re making a difference but they are. The average person in their lifetime will throw away over 50,000 items of bathroom waste. On top of that only 50% of bathroom waste is recycled compared to 90% of kitchen waste. If you are looking to reduce your plastic consumption your bathroom is the perfect place to start.
We want sustainable oral care to be the norm. Whilst we realise that is a while off we are always looking to develop new innovative products. Now that restrictions are lifting gradually we also want to start back up with community initiatives and getting our staff involved in beach cleans which we’ve been missing a lot!
