![]() Just FYI, because they’re so easy to use, it’s possible to overdo it. “Floss picks are easy to use, particularly when it comes to reaching in between the molars.” Plus, most people don’t floss correctly, but floss picks make it much easier to do so, she adds. “Using string floss can be difficult, especially for people with bigger hands,” says Sanda Moldovan, MS, DDS, a double board-certified periodontist and nutritionist in Beverly Hills. Even though we know it’s an important part of dental and gum health, it’s tempting to skip it, particularly when you have to deal with wrangling traditional floss. She is an avid flosser (and has only had one major cavity to show for it) and prefers silk dental flosses for their easy biodegradability and smooth texture.As far as oral care goes, flossing tends to be the one thing that most often gets tossed to the wayside. Starre Vartan has been researching and reviewing environmentally sustainable products for 15 years and wrote a book on eco-friendly, healthy living. So if you are an on-again-off-again flosser, buy a few different brands, find the best fit and slide for your teeth, and give the rest away to friends and family once you have found your ideal thickness. If it’s so hard to get floss through that you hit your gums every time, that’s not the floss for you. Floss should move through teeth smoothly so you can get between your teeth and slide the floss a couple of inches easily. ![]() The spacing of everyone’s teeth is a bit different, so what works for your mom or partner might not work for you. Too often, floss is a bad fit, which is one of the main reasons people stop using it. In these cases, the products listed are the best options taking all the packaging into consideration, and still better than all plastic floss brands. There are a couple of nylon options on our list, but only in the cases of expandable floss and interdental brushes that don’t have a non-nylon version. That said, PLA is a better choice than nylon, since it’s made from a renewable material and could degrade eventually more easily than nylon does. While PLA (corn-based) plastics are technically compostable, it really only breaks down effectively in industrial compost facilities-and it’s unlikely they would take floss even if you have access to one. If you want a vegan product, it won’t be compostable, and vice versa, so the choice is between PLA plastic and nylon flosses (vegan) and silk (not vegan and compostable). Those people who are concerned about their cancer risk may want to avoid products that contain PTFE. Some conventional flosses use the same coating as Teflon pans, Polytetrafluoroethylene (PTFE), which can be ingested in small amounts as you floss-and may be linked to a range of cancers. Typically, most conventional flosses are made from nylon, which will sit in landfills as long as the plastic package it came in, and some are even coated with a petroleum-based wax. Then there's the floss itself, which could be made from wax-covered cotton, which is biodegradable and/or compostable, or silk. There’s the package, which can be reusable (often glass, sometimes a more durable plastic), or compostable material. ![]() There are a few different ways to think about packaging and floss. What to Consider When Shopping for Biodegradable Dental Floss For a silk floss, the TreeBird hits all the sustainability marks you can think of, if you want a floss you can find at the supermarket, the Radius Natural Silk Floss is a fairly easy-to-find option.
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