An apple core. It's a highly biodegradable material, right?
But did you know what you do with it affects how long it takes to biodegrade?
Throw it in land-fill and it will take more than 10 years to degrade completely. But, because there are no plants in landfills to feed off the decomposed nutrients, it never actually re-enters the circular biosystem. So it's maybe safe to agree that nothing in landfill ever biodegrades completely.
In the ocean, it'll take 8 weeks to break down. 2 weeks for your backyard compost to do the job and just 8 days for an industrial compost facility.
So, if you're an apple core, it's not all that bad. As long as you end-up somewhere other than landfill. But what about things that don't degrade so easily... like a toothbrush.
With over 24 million Aussies, it's estimated we throw around 50 million toothbrushes into landfill every year. In the USA, around 55,000 tons of toothbrushes go to landfill annually. To sit there. Forever.
But if we make the switch to bamboo toothbrushes, we lighten our load on the planet just that little bit more. Because unlike plastic, a bamboo toothbrush decomposes. Naturally.
Bamboo is a renewable grass that requires no pesticides, fertiliser and little water to grow. It's 35% more efficient than trees at sequestering CO2 (pulling CO2 from the air) and with 30% more yield than trees, bamboo is being used to help combat deforestation in developing countries.
At GRAM, our bamboo toothbrushes from GoBamboo are made from - you guessed it - bamboo. But with nylon bristles to give you a soft but effective clean similar to a traditional plastic toothbrush.
A new sustainable, Australian-made dental care range comes to Gram Sustainable: read more
What you won't have though, is the plastic guilts!