Are These Cool? Is It Me?

It was bad enough with those little plastic thingies with the tiny little piece of floss strung across them. I see those in the stores in packs of hundreds, and they make me despondent. I would see them tossed, discarded on the ground... so so gross. How is it OK to toss those? Of course, even in *real* garbage, they just end up out and about eventually. So needless. So unnecessary.

Apparently, those weren't enough, or stopped selling well enough, because G*U*M came out with a new one.

"For healthy gums and a great-looking smile, you’ve certainly come to the right place. GUM® Soft-Picks® are the convenient way to effectively dislodge food, remove plaque and massage gums." Whew! Good, I needed something convenient.

One-month supply?

It's important to get the crap out from between your teeth. We've all had the experience when something was STUCK-stuck between our teeth and drove us crazy til we could get it out. But, surely, this is not the answer. Not more plastic. These little things are even more insidious because they ARE so small and would be thought of as harmless, what could they possibly do? Think about it: if just half a million people can't live without this product - and that's a really low number, considering the populations of, say, Los Angeles alone - and they use 1 or two a day, not every day but even 4 days a week... OK, wow. My calculator on my phone blew up. Start over. if half a million people use even just 2 of these a week (unlikely to be that low), then that's 1 million little plastic sticks used. Multiply that by 52 weeks in a year, and just picture 52 million of these lined up end to end. Let's get even more mathematical... there are 63,360 inches in a mile (thank you, Google!). These are more than an inch long, I think, but for ease of calculation, we'll go with an inch. Divide 52 million by 63,360 and you get 820. Ugh, algebra. I think I did it right. To figure how many miles that would take is... yeah. OK. I do math good. I THINK, feel free to correct me, that this would be 820 miles. Taking my home state as example, it is only 300 or so miles from Pittsburgh to Philadelphia, all the way across the state. So, in one year, with an screamingly conservative estimate, you would cross the state over 2 and a half times. With plastic. And that ends up in the oceans, being ingested by innocent mammals and fish. Because we can't possibly use a less convenient way to get crap from between our teeth.

I had braces and MAN OH MAN do I know you need little stuff to get crap out from under them. It's almost hellish, stuff stuck under your braces. Whoo. I did use the little metal version of these. Wasn't great, but at least I know that tiny little blip of metal belongs on the Earth way more than this plastic.

Why, why why.

To Floss or Not to Floss - That is NOT the Question

I never used to floss. See, I hated my teeth. Hated. I was a tetracycline baby. When I was born, I was very sick, and they stuffed me full of the common antibiotic, tetracycline. They don't give that to babies anymore, because it has an effect on developing bones and teeth. I and many many other people therefore have "tetracycline-stained" teeth. They aren't really "stained" because it's IN the tooth, but our teeth are grey or brown or look like marble or like we smoke 10 packs a day with tea and coffee. So my teeth looked dingy, and I hated them, and there was nothing I could do short of re-doing my whole mouth with lots and lots of money. I didn't care if they fell right out of my head. I brushed them, but that was it. Dentists warned, but I didn't care. I didn't pay any attention to dental floss.

But now, I have a mouth full of pearly-whites. Well, porcelain whites. Every single tooth I have is covered in a beautiful little snug jacket of porcelain. And I love them. I love them so much and I want to protect them. They are pretty pretty pretty and they were EXPENSIVE. So now, I floss! I never had a lot of practice at it, and maybe I'm not that good; but, darn it, I am not the idiot that apparently most of us are when it comes to using floss.

Oh, we've all seen the commercials. I'm talking about FLOSS PICKS here. You know, those little plastic prong-fork-handle thingies with a tiny bit of floss threaded on them? SO handy! SO helpful! SO EASY TO USE!!! Screw regular floss! That's far too hard to use! We can't be bothered by that! We've become too stupid to possibly handle using regular floss!!

Come on, they didn't really say that. Did they? Yes, they pretty much did. We have to simplify floss because we are now at risk of getting tangled up in it if we try to use it. We're just that dumb... and in they came. I have friends who swear by those things. I see people using them ALL the time. Well it's just so darned convenient! We might not think of flossing in public, but gosh dang it these are really just fancy toothpicks and those are publically accepted, right? Um, eww! And then I see them discarded on streets and sidewalks... little plastic grossities with tooth-junk on them. I feel the same as if I saw a discarded condom.

This is yet another example of how we simply adopt a so-called convenience without really thinking of the environmental consequences. Do we NEED these floss picks? No. We DO NOT. We can go into the bathroom after lunch and do a proper flossing with regular floss that, sure, comes in a plastic container, but is really much much less plastic over the life of the product. There are natural flosses out there... my good friends at Radius Toothbrush have a delightful floss, and their company is very green. There is nothing good or redeeming or necessary about plastic floss picks. They need to go away.

There is ONE company I saw while researching... among the Oral-B and Crest products, there is a pick made by Den-Tek that is a compostable material made from starch, NOT plastic. That's better. Not the best, but much better. There are still problems to be addressed with the starch products, in that they can be mistaken for plastic and ruin a batch of recycling. But it's a step anyway. Maybe if you cannot figure out how to use real floss, you can try those instead of the plastic ones. Just please dispose of them properly. It's really gross when they are just laying there on the ground.