Can you recycle dental floss

Answer 1

Anything can be recycled granted you find a new use for it. Anything can be recycled granted you find a new use for it. That being said, most floss is not made of biodegradable material. Flosses from oral care brands like Crest and Oral-B use either nylon or the same material used in Teflon, a substance called polytetrafluorethylene (PTFE). The production of both of these materials produce toxic chemicals that are harmful to the environment. For instance, a main ingredient of nylon is adipic acid, the production of which produces large volumes of the greenhouse gas nitrous oxide. Greener methods of producing adipic acid have been developed, but whether manufacturers are implimenting them or not is hard to determine. Neither nylon nor PTFE are biodegradable. This doesn't mean they won't ever break down, but it takes decades.

question: if they are not biodegradable....how exactly will they break down in decades???

answer: Good question. Some plastics that are exposed to sunlight over long periods will undergo photo-degredation. Sunlight weakens the bonds between molecules and they disintegrate, but this only breaks plastics down into smaller pieces of the same material. Instead of, say, a big milk jug you'll have dozens of tiny milk-jug pieces. They'll never break down into their original compounds to be reused by another organism, which would be real biodegredation. I don't know what happens when plastics are buried.

Alternatives to nylon and PTFE flosses are available, but have their own drawbacks. For example, natural silk floss is biodegradable, but the processing it goes through is not generally eco-friendly and often involves unfair labor practices, though not always. The best bet for Earth-friendly flossing is to use as little floss as possible to clean your teeth. Floss picks are a good alternative because they use less than an inch of floss per pick as opposed to the recommended 18 inches of rolled floss. DenTek makes a floss pick with a biodegradable handle made from a starch-based resin, which would replace the plastic handle on other floss picks. The actual floss is recyclable polyethylene. Those are probably your best bet. Happy flossing!