Benefits of Using Sustainable Biodegradable Dental Floss Vs Traditional Floss

You know that flossing everyday helps promote healthy teeth and guns, but you may be surprised to learn that flossing is a great weapon to help fight diseases.

Biodegradable Floss Benefits

Dental floss reaches spaces your toothbrush does not touch. If food debris remains between your teeth, bacteria reproduce very fast, attack the gums, and expel an acid that triggers tooth corrosion. When bacteria attack, your gums swell and recruit immune system cells. So, if you floss the right way every day, your immune system will have more energy left to fight issues in other places of your body.

For example, a recent study found that “COVID-19 patients with gum disease were 3.5 times more likely to be admitted to the intensive care unit, 4.5 times more likely to need a ventilator, and 8.8 times more likely to die when compared to those without gum disease.”¹

Flossing helps you fight other viral diseases, as well as preventing heart attacks.²

Problems With Traditional Floss

One problem with traditional dental floss is that it’s composed of toxic and unsustainable materials. Most are packaged in a plastic container. Plus, because many countries don’t have the appropriate infrastructure to recycle them, and many plastics cannot undergo the recycling process without losing performance anyway, 91% of the plastic humans generate is not recycled.³

That means loads of small plastic containers end up in landfills or accumulate (and break down into microplastics) in the environment, taking more than 400 years to decompose, in a process that emits loads of greenhouse gases (GHG).³

Plastic debris ends up in the stomach of birds, sea turtles, and many other marine and beach animals. It leaches toxic pollutants and, cycling through the atmosphere, invades all ecosystems, as well as the human body.

The material the dental floss itself is made of – nylon – is also non-biodegradable. That means the tiny pieces of floss accumulate in and cycle through the environment.

Because they are so tiny and light, pieces of floss easily find their way to the ocean, and because they are designed not to tear, they stay in marine and other environments, suffocating creatures that mistake them for food.

Besides nylon, traditional dental floss comes coated in Per- and Polyfluoroalkyl Substances (PFAs). These man-made chemicals are used to manufacture many other things, including Teflon and food packaging. They grant floss its ability to move between teeth easily, but their cost is very high… they accumulate in the human body and are linked with several health issues, such as:

• Increased cholesterol levels
• Liver and kidney damage
• Cancer
• Reproductive and developmental disruption
• Low birthweight
• Impairments on the immune system⁴

With these impacts, it’s no wonder biodegradable dental floss has become a fast growing eco-trend!

Go a Step Further With Your Eco-Smile

When choosing an eco-friendly biodegradable dental floss, there are a few options that allow you to go even further to help the planet.

For example, choosing a product that also provides a way to reforest areas in the rainforest, as well as help rehabilitate wildlife, allows you to help your health, the planet’s health while you keep your smile healthy.

Of course, you can also go even farther an measure your emissions using an ecological footprint calculator, and then remove that footprint with tree planting offsets offered by one of the best carbon offset providers.

By avoiding materials that are noxious to both your own health and Earth ecosystems, you can tangibly contribute to combating climate change, plastic pollution, uncontrolled waste generation, the depletion of natural resources, and wildlife damage.

Making the eco-trendy move to biodegradable dental floss will make your dentist, your smile, and the planet happier.