Designed to be repaired so it never ends up in landfill, the stylish Suri electric toothbrush also comes with a ‘clean and charge’ travel case. Jenny Southan reports
Have you ever thought about how many toothbrushes the average person gets through in their lifetime? Every year, billions go into landfill, make there way into the ocean or end up washing up on beaches on remote desert islands.
To combat the throw-away culture associated with toothbrushes, Suri has set itself the task of designing a sustainable electric toothbrush that comes with a hassle-free prepaid mail-back scheme so customers can effortlessly recycle their used heads for no extra charge. (Presumably you’d want to save them up to send back en masse.)
Even more innovative is that the brush heads are plant-based, with bristles made from cornstarch and castor oil. The pack does come with quite a lot of packaged parts though, so quite a lot of waste, even though recyclable.
Unlike other electric models, the aluminium body has also been purposefully configured to be easily dismantled by Suri so that each and every component can be repaired or recycled.
For those who opt for a flexible subscription plan, Suri (a certified B-Corp) provides a lifetime guarantee including free maintenance and replacement of brush heads every one to six months.
The consideration for creating a better brush doesn’t end there. The battery lasts more than 40 days (much longer than many other electric toothbrushes on the market) and the toothbrush comes with a “clean and charge” travel case with a built-in UV-C light that kills 99.9% of bacteria on the brush head.
Priced at £95, the Suri Sustainable Sonic Toothbrush comes in four colours: Winter Fern (green), Midnight Black (black), Morning Waves (blue) and Sea Mist (white). Globetrender thinks these would look stylish in any home (or hotel) bathroom.
The Suri apparently removes up to five times more plaque than manual toothbrushes, delivering 33,000 brush movements per minute. However, I did not feel the action was particularly effective – it vibrates at two speeds but the heads don’t seem to be that resilient. They are quite soft compared to regular brushes so I forsee them wearing out quite quickly.
A particularly nice feature is the magnetic mirror mount that frees up space on the bathroom counter and stops toothpaste “gunk” from accumulating on the base of the brush.