How much plastic will you save?

Every time you replace a plastic toothbrush or floss dispenser, more plastic goes in the trash. See how much your household could avoid in a year by switching to bamboo brushes and silk floss.

1People in your home

2Toothbrush type

3How often you replace it

4How often you floss

–

grams of plastic you could avoid each year

–plastic brushes or heads replaced

–plastic floss dispensers replaced

–kilograms of plastic over 10 years

–about the weight of this many 500-milliliter plastic water bottles

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Here's how we estimate. A typical plastic manual toothbrush weighs about 18 grams. A bamboo brush still has about 1 gram of nylon bristles, so each switch avoids about 17 grams. A plastic electric brush head weighs about 3.5 grams, and switching to a bamboo head avoids about 3 grams. A typical plastic floss dispenser weighs about 4 grams. We estimate daily flossers use 4 dispensers a year, and people who floss a few times a week use 2. For comparison, a 500-milliliter plastic water bottle weighs about 10 grams. Weights vary by brand, so these numbers are estimates.