By 
Toothbrush Terrain. Image credit: krossbow on Flickr.
Look at your toothbrush. It’s likely made of some form of plastic, rubber, and inventive design engineering, packed into a small space. After your initial decision process, where color, teeth cleaning wizardry, and perhaps recycled content and recyclability came into play, you don’t really notice it that much anymore. It’s become part of the background.
Until now.
Now being the start of another round of winter colds, one of the preventative practices being to throw away your toothbrush and get a new one. Hang on, you know I can’t let that be how it goes!
But what else do you do? If you have a Preserve toothbrush you have some options: Drop them off in a Gimme 5 bin, if they happen to be nearby. Send the toothbrush back in the mail. Send several #5 plastic items back to Preserve.
These are all fine and noble, but the question comes up: How many of you actually do this? If there’s no bin conveniently located, is sending one toothbrush in the mail going to have a carbon footprint that outweighs simply disposing of it? With no incentive other then your polished conscience, will you make the effort to collect and mail back a box worth of #5 plastic? And above all, does the material need to be recycled in the first place?
This has been on my mind a lot lately, and I’d like your help.
Beginning in January, we’re starting a new collection Brigade for toothbrushes, where people will earn ___ for the charity of their choice, able to be collected and sent back in a box we’ve covered the expenses on. If you have kids, you can bet they’ll make fast work of collecting their whole school’s toothbrushes if it’s going towards a cause that supports them.
Great, but first, we’d like your ideas as to what we could do with them to turn them into salable products.
The focus here is something that takes minimal processing, and that uses the product’s original form as much as possible. As in, no shredding, melting, re-forming into something new. We know you at Triple Pundit are a creative, innovative bunch, so no matter what your area of knowledge, you may have just the idea that will spark the creation of goods that will divert tons of plastic (literally) from the landfill, while saving energy doing it.
We’ve turned Oreo wrappers into kites and newspapers into pencils . So, what do you see us doing with toothbrushes?
Please share, below. Pass this article on to your other creative minded friends. And please, no idea is too crazy. Ready? Go!
November 02, 09 at 12:50 pm PST | uberVU - social comments writes:
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Comments
November 02, 2009 at 13:01 pm PST | ritaserse writes:
By the way
November 03, 2009 at 9:39 am PST | Ryan Mickle writes:
What about molding a dozen toothbrushes together to form a single brush for household cleaning, etc.?
November 03, 2009 at 9:58 am PST | Jennifer writes:
cut off the heads and use the handles for garden stakes, or plant name plates (”thyme”, “mint”, etc.)
use handles to make an interesting mobile, or wind chime
tie handles together to make an interesting garden border or fence
attach the brush heads to a dog chew toy. doggie chews and gets teeth brushed at same time. (oh wait, these are used brushes? maybe not…)
use handles for bird perches in a feeder or bird house.
November 03, 2009 at 18:36 pm PST | Jeff writes:
Use the toothbrush handles to make complete bird houses, roofed with other recycled plastic.
November 04, 2009 at 6:22 am PST | pam writes:
cut the brushes off and use the handles as a lego type builing tool for children
cut the heads off and color co-ordinate and use as math tools for children
cut the heads off and use as “woven tile designs” on table tops
cut the heads off.glue together,put wheels on the bottom for plant stands
cut the heads off glue together and use as foot scrapers at the front door
cut the heads off and invent a game
November 04, 2009 at 11:15 am PST | Cindy Lin writes:
We actually pretty much keep our old toothbrushes forever. They are great for household cleaning and can get into creases that a regular sponge or cleaning rag will miss.
November 06, 2009 at 15:59 pm PST | Nick Aster writes:
I keep ‘em around for a while – work great for cleaning bike chains, and other little mechanical things.
November 08, 2009 at 20:37 pm PST | Marvin Corea writes:
I also keep some around, but with 6 people in the family, they tend to pile up quickly. :)
How about creating storage containers?