Fiona Alston spoke to three female founders who have made it their business to offer you sustainable and healthy oral care products in Boost My Business.

While on a conservation trip to help pandas in China a few years ago vet Niamh McGill came across a market seller in Beijing selling wooden toothbrushes.

"My friend said it was a bamboo toothbrush, because plastic toothbrushes are one of the worst things for the environment and I couldn't believe I hadn't heard that before," she explains.

"They're awful because they can't be recycled and that kind of really struck me," she says.

The was the seed which grew into a business idea and now McGill's company Bambooth. Bambooth is a biodegradable toothbrush with a compostable bamboo handle and nylon bristles. At the end of its teeth cleaning career the bristles can be removed, and the handle thrown into the compost bin.

Placed in a something recyclable, the nylon bristles can be put in the recycle bin and for those who haven’t the patience for bristle removal the brush head can be snapped off.

"We designed and developed a bamboo toothbrush that we thought was attractive, and the most important thing was it had to function as well as a normal toothbrush," says McGill.

"A lot of the time, with sustainable products, people feel like they’re making a bit of a sacrifice - that the cost of choosing sustainable products can be that they're accessing lower functionality or lower performance," she continues.

"It's just trying to get people to realise that you can choose sustainable without sacrificing performance or style," she adds.

As McGill’s other passion is conservation, they have tied each of the brushes in the range to different ecosystems. Coral pink for the Coral Reef, Forrest Green, Sea Blue, and Aqua Marine. They donate funds from each sale to the conservation charities protecting those ecosystems.

During the initial Covid period Bambooth found it the perfect time to regroup, initiate changes and make plans for the future. With the help of their Local Enterprise Office in Meath they availed of mentoring and used the online trading voucher to help them sell directly to the public.

"We also managed to get the Oral Health Foundation’s approval through. That's an independent panel of dental experts in the UK. They have never looked at a sustainable toothbrush," she explains.

"We started the process of going through their accreditation program in January of this year and then in June, we got the great news that we're the world's first bamboo toothbrush that’s ever been backed and accredited – it felt like a step forward in sustainable dental care."

The next step for Bambooth is their subscription service which they are launching with a new website this month. On the products side of things, they will soon be launching dental tablets.

"We're trying to get rid of toothpaste tubes and we all know that nothing good happens with plastic," she says. "The dental tablets would mean a zero-waste solution and are also handy for travel - easy to carry with you."

"In the next six to twelve months we're going to look to have a full suite of dental products," she adds.

Dr Lisa Creaven co-founded Spotlight Oral Care with her sister Vanessa. The sisters, who are both dentists in Galway, launched their dental products business 4 years ago. Their range began with teeth whitening strips and now includes toothbrushes, mouthwash, dental floss and toothpaste. This week saw the launch of their latest product.

"We launched a Water Flosser this week. The water flosser is upgrading your flossing routine," says Creaven. It flosses your teeth by using a combination of water pressure and pulsations.

"It's basically all about elevating your oral care routine, and creating products that are effective, customised to people's individual needs and then also creating products that make the whole experience more effective and easier to build into your routine," she says.

"Oral care is what we're passionate about and as dentists, it's our job to create products and a routine for our customers is really going to benefit them long term," she adds.

Their concerns over the toothpaste options for their practice clients was the driving force behind creating their own safer and more sustainable products.

"We wanted to create a range of toothpaste that was effective," she says. "They're also clean and formulated in a really biocompatible way and free from any nasty unnecessary additives and also come in 100%, recyclable packaging, and all targeting the individual needs of our customers."

"It’s like skincare - you don't find one generic moisturiser and you’re done," she continues. "You know your own skin type, you know what you suffer from, and you're using the products that are targeting those individualised needs."

"I think consumers are a lot more educated in terms of what ingredients they want to put in their bodies," she says.

Spotlight are currently selling in Ireland, across the UK [in Boots stores] and in Scandinavian markets. They have also captured the US market with contracts in Ulta Beauty, CVS and Target stores.

The lockdown period gave Creaven the chance to see if their retail customers would follow their brand online.

"I think consumers are looking at what brands that they're buying from and I think we're at an inflection point where people are really considering where they are spending their money, what they want to support and our sales have grown astronomically during Covid," says Creaven.

Over in West Meath Hannah Moore has been paying attention to the colour of her teeth since she was fifteen. It’s where her teeth whitening story began.

"I didn't care about like the ingredients," says Moore, "and I definitely didn't care about the method. All I cared about were the results."

This led her to ordering whitening strips from America which were less than kind to her teeth and it turns out they left her with some irreversible damage to her teeth.

She began to take more care if what she was putting into her body a few years later when she was diagnosed with an autoimmune disease. Her research for a healthier lifestyle involved her researching what is in the whitening products she continued to use. She then decided to create a whitening product of her own.

"We wanted to create something that was the most effective whitening product out there but also actually improved your oral health," she explains.

This is where L A Pacific toothpaste was born. It’s a whitening toothpaste containing an enzyme which interacts with the sugars on your teeth.

"The enzyme interacts with the natural sugars on your teeth that build up throughout the day. And then it turns it into an organically produced bleach, which is 100% enamel safe and 100% zero sensitivity as well," she explains.

"Another really important part for me was actually investing in clinically proving the formulation as well," she continues. "I draw a lot of inspiration from skincare and I think that's the category that we sit in - it's like this new emerging category of oral beauty."

"We invested in clinically proving the formula with an independent facility in the States, the University of Indiana, and with that we were able to prove that within two minutes of using the toothpaste you can actually remove 82% of stains," she says. "And we are looking to improve that."

The toothpaste also contains Pacific sea salt which acts as a natural exfoliant for your teeth and Californian crystals which is like a highlighter for your teeth.

Moore also launched a new product in the last few months. The entrepreneur who likes to innovate and push boundaries has added cannabidiol creating the world’s first CBD complex whitening toothpaste.

We are the world's first to use enzymatic whitening which I just think is so cool for an Irish company run by a 27-year old. We’re shaking things up like the oral care industry," says Moore.

"I don't think oral care has ever been cool but I'm a woman on a mission to make it!" she adds.

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