Toothbrush recycling in the UK

Dentists recommend changing your toothbrush every 3-4 months. While this might be good practice for healthy teeth, it's bad news for the planet. In the UK, we throw away an estimated 212 million toothbrushes or brush heads every year. That’s more than 2,300 tonnes of plastic waste that ends up in landfill or the incinerator. It’s not all doom and gloom though. Toothbrush recycling is now possible on the high street and your old brush can be transformed into something completely new.

What’s a toothbrush made from?

A standard manual toothbrush is made from a mix of materials, and this is what makes normal kerbside recycling tricky. Let’s take a look:

The handle is usually made from polypropylene plastic. This is the kind of plastic that's used in many everyday items like yogurt pots, margarine tubs, and some plant pots. It is recyclable, but whether it’s accepted in your household kerbside collection depends on where you live. By 2026, it should be part of standard kerbside collections across England, thanks to the Simpler Recycling reforms.

Bristles are most often made from Nylon which is not usually recyclable in kerbside collections. Reason being that it requires specialist facilities. The bristles are tiny, lightweight, and usually fused into the toothbrush head with metal staples or embedded in plastic. This makes them difficult to separate and sort in conventional recycling plants.

The extras like rubber grips, and in electric toothbrushes, metal staples, batteries, and circuitry cause a headache too. Each of these materials needs to be separated and sent to a different recycling stream, which is complicated and expensive for standard recycling facilities. That’s why specialist schemes, where each part is separated and dismantled properly, are the only real route for recycling them.

UK toothbrush recycling schemes in 2025

Luckily, there’s a way you can keep your toothbrush out of landfill. You can take it to the high street. Retailers that are members of the Cosmetic, Toiletry and Perfumery Association (CTPA) allow customers to return beauty and grooming items and packaging that’s not currently accepted in kerbside recycling schemes. One of those retailers is Boots. Through the Recycle at Boots scheme, you can take back your empty beauty, health, wellness and dental products, from any brand. Note that you can only take back things you can't recycle at home. The best part is, you get rewards for doing it. All you need to do is download the Recycle at Boots app and sign up to start recycling and earning rewards. As well as being able to recycle your old toothbrushes and electric toothbrush heads, you can also recycle items like toothpaste tubes, lotion pumps, mascaras, and more. Here’s the full list of items you can recycle at Boots.

How toothbrush recycling works

Once your toothbrush is sent to a specialist recycling facility, it’s broken down and sorted by material type, including plastics, metals, nylon bristles, and rubber components. The plastic parts are shredded into flakes, then washed to remove residue like toothpaste or saliva. The clean plastic flakes are melted down and formed into pellets, small granules that manufacturers can use as raw material. The pellets are then used to mould new products, reducing the need for virgin plastic.

Metals (from electric brush heads or staples) are recovered and sent to metal recycling streams. Nylon bristles, though technically recyclable, are often too small and contaminated to process efficiently. In most cases, they’re incinerated for energy recovery or sent to landfill. Once processed, toothbrush plastics can be turned into outdoor furniture, playground equipment, plant pots, or construction boards.

If you are looking to collect a large amount of toothnbrushes, take a look at our range of toothbrush recycling stickers to make it easier to collect your items in one place. Or if you need something special, our design team can create custom recycling stickers

You may not think recycling your toothbrush will make a difference, but it absolutely does. Every toothbrush you recycle through a specialist scheme helps divert waste from landfill, reduces plastic pollution, and contributes to a more circular economy. We think that’s definitely something to smile about.