The green approach has also involved the oral care world, which is abandoning plastic and disposable products to focus on sustainable materials.
Brands and companies understand that they must offer eco-friendly alternatives to plastic products to stay ahead of the competition in today’s market and look for a toothbrush manufacturer that can supply top-quality and sustainable products.
Let’s discuss the topic in the following article.
How to distinguish a sustainable toothbrush manufacturer
Oral care is one of many industries that are converting to the production of totally environmentally friendly accessories. Giving up plastics, pollutants, and disposable products, many brands are looking for new materials to offer maximum performance without damaging the environment.
As accustomed as we may be to classic plastic toothbrushes and flosses or mouthwashes and toothpastes rich in chemical ingredients, there are now wooden toothbrushes, charcoal, silk thread, and natural extracts that are claiming their place in the dental care industry and offering their excellent properties in an environmentally friendly way.
It is difficult, however, to find a 100% sustainable toothbrush manufacturer. It often happens that a manufacturing company calls itself environmentally conscious even though it is not.
Even if it only produces wooden toothbrushes and dental care products, it doesn’t mean it is sustainable. Using wood is not enough. To offer eco-friendly products, the entire production process must be sustainable.
The manufacturing process of wooden toothbrushes
Although the production of toothbrushes may seem simple, considerable engineering and manufacturing effort is required and especially if they are made of wood.
Plastic toothbrushes, in fact, are simpler to create: typically, an injection mould is used with a plastic that can be easily cast and moulded. Once the mould is created, the bristles can be added.
On the contrary, you can’t use mould to produce wooden toothbrushes, so they must be created using special machinery and tools specific for wood manufacturing.
The advantage is that without moulds the initial investment is much lower, and you don’t have to produce a new mould if something must be modified.
Manufacturing toothbrushes and finding a balance between profitability, environmental concern, and social commitment can be quite difficult; you must rely on a competent toothbrush manufacturer that completes each step of production in a sustainable way.
What does it mean?
The first step is the collection of wood. You must ensure the manufacturer you select uses only FSC/PEFC-certified wood that comes from forests managed by applying sustainable practices that:
- improve the health of forests
- encourage regeneration
- increase safety
- satisfy the market need for timber
In a responsibly managed forest, for every tree harvested, another one replaces it, ensuring preservation of the natural wildlife.
Moreover, if the company promotes the use of fast-growing timber, e.g., beech, hornbeam, maple, ash, and birch, it means it takes care of sustainability and the environment.
Production, too, must be as sustainable as possible.
An eco-friendly wood manufacturing company tries to reduce its energy consumption and minimize discarded materials by following the principles of a circular economy model.
For example, verify if it uses discarded pieces of wood to fuel heating systems and drying chambers or recycles them to create other wooden items.
Then, producing wooden oral care products where the raw material is collected makes distribution and logistics more sustainable and shortens the process that raw materials go through to reach production.
Verify also that it conducts periodic audits to monitor the company’s energy consumption and tries to reduce it as much as possible.
All these elements together make the toothbrush manufacturer really environmentally conscious.
Besides sustainability, you must ensure the wood manufacturing company can create ergonomic and top-quality oral care items that are functional, durable, and comfortable. You should also be able to require predrilled toothbrush heads with any kind of hole field pattern and customized according to your clients’ requests.
Since 1937, the Minelli Group has designed and developed top-quality wooden products whose quality is recognized all over the world.
The company has always focused on sustainability: in 1999, we were among the first to be certified by the FSC when it was not yet a standard. Today, we are also PEFC certified.
We recently underwent an EcoVadis Audit and received a highly positive rating in terms of environmental, labor & human rights, ethics, and sustainable procurement impact.
This demonstrates our sincere dedication to pursue a responsible manufacturing model that respects the environment as well as all ethical aspects of business.
If you are looking for a reliable and competent toothbrush manufacturer, do not hesitate to contact us!
