Why is the Awesome Floss string made of plastic? I really try to avoid plastics as much as I can.

We hear you! We really try our best to avoid plastics as much as possible, too.

Unfortunately, while we’ve been able to reduce or eliminate the plastics in many of our products, there are still some areas where we haven’t yet found a viable eco-friendly substitute. One example of this is the plastic nylon bristles on our toothbrushes. Even our BrushEco bamboo toothbrush still has nylon bristles. All other parts of it are eco-friendly and compostable, but despite lots of sleuthing over the years (which is still ongoing, by the way), we haven’t yet found a replacement bristle option that’s still going to be able to do a good (and comfortable!) job cleaning the teeth and gums, and that’s truly eco-friendly (in our digging, we’ve found lots of examples of “solutions” that turned out to be clever marketing and greenwashing, but the product wasn’t truly any better than what we’re currently using).

Another example of this is—you guessed it—the string of our Awesome Floss. When we began the process of creating our own floss, we knew we wanted to use a woven design for it because it helps remove 44% more plaque than regular floss, and because we wanted to be able to incorporate essential oils, hydroxyapatite, and xylitol into it. We did consider a silk floss option, but we ultimately decided against it because it wouldn’t have that plaque-removing woven design. In addition, it wouldn’t have been usable for the members in our community who are vegan (even though all of the ingredients on it are vegan-friendly).

So, while we may explore the silk option more in the future, for our initial floss creation, we went with the only woven option: polyester (but at least this floss is more eco-friendly than most other plastic flosses—keep reading to learn how!).

Awesome Floss is made from 100% recycled water bottles that were repurposed from the plastic waste stream. While our ultimate dream would be to create a plastic-free floss one day, in the meantime, we consider reusing plastics to be a major step towards a more sustainable future. And, to be clear, the plastic is essentially ‘decomposed’ and then made into our Awesome Floss, so there is no risk of any contamination. 🙂

Plus, the packaging is paperboard with no plastic coatings on it, which makes for an easy-to-compost floss package (please just be sure to keep the box away from water while you’re using it!). And, inside the paperboard packaging, the floss spool itself is inside a compostable cellulose bag made from renewable wood pulp.

Thank you for doing your research to find the answer to this question, and please know that we strive to continually improve our product solutions, and we are and will always continue to be on the lookout for sustainable, eco-friendly, and non-toxic options so we can continue to reduce (and hopefully one day totally eliminate!) our use of plastic.

If you happen to come across any sustainable swaps that might help us continue to move towards this goal, please contact us to let us know about them.