This month we continue our recommendation of sustainable products for the bathroom in Green Space – a community place for sharing great finds for your home that are healthy inside and out and take care of our planet too.

Our previous recommendations were also about personal care products like body washes,  shampoos, and shaving products.   Did you make a switch? If so, we want to hear from you! Share your story with us on a product swap that made you feel good. You will be entered into a drawing to win finds featured in our stories. Don’t forget to follow us on Facebook and Instagram @wiltongogreen and use the hashtag #madetheswitch so you can be part of our growing community of green do-gooders. Your experiences with these sustainable products or your personal favorites are always worth sharing!

Let’s Talk About Sustainable Toothpaste

Like many personal care products, sustainability in toothpaste is about two things:  packaging and ingredients, and most mainstream brands fall short on both counts.  For the most part, toothpaste comes packaged in plastic tubes that are typically not recyclable.  That means that each year your family will be tossing several plastic tubes into a landfill or the ocean. Mainstream brands also tend to include a concoction of chemicals to “improve performance”.  These include foaming agents, artificial sweeteners, preservatives, and abrasives (such as plastic micro-beads).  Natural toothpaste brands skip the chemicals, but often that also means that they forgo fluoride.  We might all agree that we don’t want plastic scrubbing beads in our toothpaste, but cavity-fighting is kind of the point.  So, let’s discuss what we know.

Fluoride:  What You Should Know:

Fluoride has been the gold standard for cavity prevention since the American Dental Association (ADA) first recommended it in the 1960’s.  Today, every product awarded the ADA Seal of Acceptance—the program that certifies safety and efficacy based on standards develop by the ADA Council on Scientific Affairs—contains fluoride.  Decades of research from the NIH and CDC back up its effectiveness at preventing cavities as well as safety. 

However, in recent years, some natural toothpaste brands have moved away from fluoride.  I had assumed that they avoided fluoride because it would prevent these brands from making an all-natural claim.  But I did some digging and fluoride is naturally occurring in water, plants, food, etc.…, and there is little to no evidence of health risks from the small amount of fluoride consumed from toothpaste. 

Natural toothpastes do tend to include cavity-fighting ingredients.  Many contain a fluoride substitute called N-HA (short for nano-hydroxyapatite).  N-HA is a compound that remineralizes teeth, reduces sensitivity, and fills in microscopic surface cracks.  In the US, the ADA has not awarded the ADA Seal of Acceptance to toothpastes that contain N-HA, but it is widely used for toothpaste in Europe and Asia.

The bottom line? Fluoride is the recommended ingredient for cavity-fighting by the ADA, and scientific evidence indicates that fluoride is safe and effective.  If you are considering a fluoride-free formula, it’s worth doing your homework on N-HA and other cavity-fighting alternatives before making the switch.

So, from an ingredient perspective, our focus is on avoiding artificial ingredients like foaming agents, artificial sweeteners, and preservatives, while fluoride is a personal choice based on your own research.  From a packaging perspective, the traditional toothpaste tube is, unfortunately, a recycling disaster. 

The Packaging Problem: Why Ditch the Tube

Most toothpaste tubes are made from a laminate of plastic and aluminum that virtually no curbside recycling program can handle. Americans alone toss an estimated one billion toothpaste tubes per year — and almost all of them end up in a landfill, where they’ll linger for decades, if not centuries. 

Toothpaste tablets solve the recycling problem. They come packaged in glass jars, aluminum tins, compostable pouches, or cardboard — all of which are either recyclable or compostable. And the sustainability wins go beyond the packaging. Because tablets contain no water (conventional toothpaste is roughly 20–40% water), they’re more compact and lighter to ship. Fewer trucks on the road, smaller carbon footprint per unit.

There are practical perks too.  Tablets are TSA-compliant, pre-measured (no more over-squeezing), and a great way to help kids use the right amount. Once you get used to chewing one into a paste before brushing, the switch feels effortless.

The Best Brands of Toothpaste Tablets

Huppy Toothpaste Tablets are plastic-free and fluoride-free.  While I would prefer tablets with fluoride, these are my favorites.  Some toothpaste tablets are hard to chew and chunky or grainy, but the Huppy tablets are easy to chew and break down into an easy-to-spread paste.  They are big enough that they make just the right amount of paste to comfortably brush your teeth.  These come in some interesting flavors like Strawberry and Cinnamon, but I love the classic Peppermint flavor.  They come in an easily recyclable aluminum tin, or in a compostable refill pouch. 

Bite Toothpaste Bits come in a glass jar and offer both fluoride and fluoride-free versions.  The tablets are a bit softer than the Huppy tabs, making them easy to chew and form into paste.  But the softness means they can crumble in the jar, wasting a few tablets each month.  Only available in a strong mint flavor.  If buying on their website, the only option is a subscription, requiring a long-term commitment.

The Humble Co offers fluoride and fluoride -free versions of their tablets.  I like the cardboard package which seems safer than the glass jars of some brands, and doesn’t require refill packaging.  The only flavors are spearmint and fresh mint (and fresh mint with charcoal), so if you aren’t a mint-lover you will need to search for other brands.  I found these tablets to be a little harder than many, but still found it easy to chew into a paste.

Best Brands of Natural Toothpaste

If you are not ready to make the leap to tablets, here is an option for natural toothpaste in a tube, though from a total sustainability perspective, it still can’t beat the tablet format.

David’s Toothpaste is the only natural option I’ve found that comes in a recyclable aluminum tube.  Available only in fluoride-free formula, Davids does have an interesting range of flavors, including spearmint, peppermint, orange vanilla, and strawberry watermelon. If you are looking for the familiarity of paste in a tube, the aluminum package is a better option than plastic as long as you recycle correctly.  This involves cutting open tube, cleaning it out, and leaving the opened tube flat before recycling.  If left as a tube or folded, it will be too small for recycling and will end up as trash.  Alternatively, drop off at the transfer station in scrap metal.