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Rethinking the Toothbrush

How can small changes create big differences?

By Dave Hakkens - November 18, 2015

in Video | Materials | Product Design | Storyhopper

For this first video, I considered something quite simple that popped into my mind and seemed worth exploring further: the size of things. We don't really think about this too much—well, unless it's an iPhone. But we could often benefit from making things smaller, without loosing function or aesthetics. And in todays world where we produce things in big quantities, a small change can lead to a big impact. The following video is an example of this way of thinking, applied to a simple toothbrush.

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What other products do you think could make do with a little trim?

This story originally appeared on Story Hopper, a collection of design stories worth sharing squeezed into short videos.

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Simon Wright

9 years ago

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Let me introduce you to my friend - the Diagonal.

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John Doe

9 years ago

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Better idea- why not just remove the teeth? That would completely obviate the need for toothbrushes, and then we could all drink soylent instead of eating solid foods, further reducing our ecological footprint.

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- Jeff Engelhardt
  
  John Doe
  
  9 years ago
  
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  What would that do to the chewing gum industry?! You're destroying American jobs you monster.
  
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Michael Wendell

9 years ago

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I'm pretty sure that when the product designers at Oral B and Reach set out to design a new brush they already strive to use the smallest amount of material possible while continuing to produce a brush that people can and want to use. Isn't that already the whole point of industrial design?

Sure, brushes could be shorter, and we might save some resources at the cost of a little comfort. But that kind of logic can be applied to anything... walk instead of drive, drink water instead of beer, etc... The whole point of design is to come up with the optimal solution, one that allows for comfort, profitability, and hopefully sustainability.

Just saying that all brushes should be shorter to save resources kind of misses the point of design in the first place.

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- Marc Sicard
  
  Michael Wendell
  
  8 years ago
  
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  I've spent some freelance time in a design studio working for several brands of toothbrush, and I can assure you that "the least amount of plastic" is probably the last thing that comes into consideration when the client decides on design. Consumers love weight. It's reassuring. Brand managers don't care at all.
  
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Steffi Burra

8 years ago

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Why don't you just make the inside of the brush hollow? I mean you would still have the same length but it won't use as much plastic and make it lighter!

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Thurstan Hethorn

9 years ago

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As much as I like the idea of plastic reduction or elimination, this 'rethinking the toothbrush' is very one dimensional. Besides a 'sample' of one person is statistically insignificant when considering 'people' I'm doubtful your hand is in the 99th percentile of sizes, there may well be other factors such as use by disabled, packaging machines that would have to be retooled and other unforeseen knock on effects.

Besides there are more novel solutions such as using your finger as the handle and putting a finger glove on with bristles. There are techniques to fill the centre of plastics with inert gas, thus reducing the volume of plastic, but at the same time providing a more pleasing shape to use. Perhaps choosing a different material all together such as wood with horsehair bristles, if only because ingesting plastic is a big concern to me and wood degrades more quickly and isn't as toxic to the environment. All of these involve redoing product, perhaps increased material cost both in monetary and perhaps deforestation in the case of wood handles.

The real solution is to make it too expensive for these companies and consumers to not consider these factors of environmental consequences and whole life-cycle of a product from sourcing and manufacturing, packaging, transport and eventual repair, replacement and finally reuse, recycling and waste management. Sure it does make it a huge task, I was made aware of this when studying product design and it is far from trivial. Even simple things such as some schemes in I believe Scotland where you return your beer bottles and get a significant amount of money back encourages this mindful behavior, the bottles presumably are cleaned and reused, reducing not only virgin material usage, but also the amount of energy used to make that initial bottle. General waste bins in Germany are weighed and users charged accordingly to encourage recycling via the 5-7 bins for the different materials.

I like the thought experiment and that a tiny change can have such a large effect in a global sense. Just pointing out that if you are going to have a title 'rethinking the toothbrush' I would expect more then just cutting the end off.

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