My bathroom feels like a land of trash.
Everywhere I look, there are small products and tubes that are destined for the trash. A container of moisturizer lasts only a handful of months. Any creams or makeup meant for your eye area should be replaced every three months. Don’t get me started on how much shampoo my hair inhales, let alone my husband’s hair and his specific dandruff shampoos. Empty bottles are constantly piling up in our bathroom garbage can, and I was desperate to put a stop to it.
I tried a few different things a few years back. Not everything worked out—bar shampoo made my scalp super itchy, and I wound up pregnant exactly one month after investing in several reusable menstrual products. My local refill shop closed, so I couldn’t refill liquid soaps and moisturizers there anymore, and a liquid refill by mail came in a massive plastic bag that I had to throw away similar to a plastic bottle.
But the one thing that did work, and still does to this day, was switching to toothpaste tablets. I signed up for Bite’s Toothpaste Bits Subscription ($48 for four months) maybe four years ago now, and every couple of months a new paper bag of tablets arrives to refill the glass jar in my bathroom. It’s a small adjustment in the sea of jars and tubes that are destined for a landfill, but I’ll take what I can get.
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Jaw Workout
Toothpaste tablets are compressed powder that you chew up to activate into a foam to brush your teeth. They have some of the ingredients you’ll find in regular toothpaste, like calcium, but often don’t have fluoride unless explicitly stated. They’re supposed to be eco-friendly, which is easy to confirm—obviously, throwing away fewer tubes is better for the environment, especially since toothpaste tubes aren’t recyclable. The tablets are also great for travel, since they aren’t liquid and aren’t at risk to burst or leak on an airplane.
Photograph: Nena Farrell
It takes more effort to use a toothpaste tablet than your standard toothpaste. You’ll want to chew it a few times and move the remnants of the powdered tablet around your mouth to get it all over versus unevenly dispersed. It’s not hard to do, but some aggressive chomps before brushing your teeth might not be the evening workout you’re used to.
The toothbrush will help distribute the tablet and foam it up, but I’ve found it’s easier to distribute it as much as you can from the get-go. You’ll also want to use a wet toothbrush to add more moisture to achieve maximum foam. There are plenty of nights where I grab two tablets instead of one, if I feel like one isn’t enough foam for my teeth that day.
It’s a weird sensation that takes some getting used to; it feels much more powdery and dry than the gel toothpaste most people use, and if you don’t chew it up well enough you might not feel like your teeth got cleaned at all. My husband tried toothpaste tablets and hated the texture and feel immediately. It took me about a week to get used to it, but now I can’t go back.
Sweet Tooth
One of the big reasons I can’t go back is because whenever I try regular toothpaste, I’m struck by how sugary-sweet it tastes.
Toothpastes don’t have sugar in them—at least not ones that are approved by the American Dental Association—but they do have some kind of sweetening agents to make it taste better. Colgate, a major toothpaste maker, lists saccharine and sorbitol as common sweetening agents. Both of these are artificial sweeteners and are used to cover the flavor of the less tasty ingredients.
Photograph: Nena Farrell
Some tablets also use sweetening agents. A popular choice is xylitol, which Huppy, another toothpaste tablet maker, says is “a natural sweetener that wards off unwelcome bacteria.” It’s also listed as an ingredient in my Bite tablets. Xylitol isn’t artificial—it’s found in plants and fruits— and there is some limited research to support that it can reduce plaque and protect enamel when used in dental settings.
Still, even if both are technically using a sugar-free sweetener, it feels like I need to brush my teeth a second time to rinse away the saccharine flavor in my mouth after using regular toothpaste. I really can taste the artificial level that gel toothpastes have.
Big Picture
Look, my bottle of 200-something toothpaste tablets isn’t saving the world. It isn’t even saving my bathroom from being a landfill pipeline, and there are plenty of other reusable products I could be integrating into my life. But it’s a step in the right direction. Since we make some of our biggest impact with where we shop, I need to put my money where I’d like the world to go.
There’s nothing I’d like to see more than more options for refillable beauty and grooming products, especially ones that don’t need a plastic refill bag. The answer is hard to find for many products (how else do you refill shampoo, if not at a local store if you’re lucky to have one?), and toothpaste is one of the easiest, which is why I’ve been happy to make the jump. I’ve also switched to tablet-based hand soap, and cleaning supplies from Blueland for my home, which has been another great and easy change.
The future might not be tablets for everything, but I’m hopeful for how many things could have a refillable future of some kind. You’ll be prying my reusable glass jar for my toothpaste tablets from my cold, dead hands if I have anything to say about it. Feel free to put that on my tombstone: Buried With Her Toothpaste.
