TePe’s Choice to Use Sustainable Plastic

At TePe we strive to meet our goals by prioritizing a focus on good people, good practice, and good products. Good product includes sustainable innovation and production, product and packaging materials, resource efficiency, and lowering CO₂ emissions.

Rethinking plastics

TePe has been producing high-quality products for over 50 years, and we want to continue this with a focus on sustainability without compromising product safety, quality, or hygienic qualities. Sustainable plastic is non-porous, meaning it does not offer crevices for bacteria to grow. We are committed to provide a renewably sourced plastic.

Before we describe the details about TePe’s sustainable plastic, let us review some terminology.

• 
  Sustainable: For materials such as plastic to be called sustainable, they must meet three requirements: be environmentally, economically, and socially sustainable.
• Renewable Resource: a resource which can be used repeatedly and replaced naturally. These resources can be recreated or regrown within a relatively short time interval.
• Renewable Energy: is energy collected from renewable resources, which are naturally replenished on a human timescale, such as sunlight, wind, rain, tides, waves, and geothermal heat.

Our Choices for Sustainable Plastic

Today we work with two main materials that both considerably lower our CO₂ emissions. Instead of being sourced from fossil-fuel crude oil, we have now integrated renewable sourced materials.

1. Plastic made from sugar cane. The carbon footprint is nearly negligible, mainly since the sugar cane plant absorbs CO₂ during the cultivation. Sugar cane has low waste and a rapid lifecycle. Sugar is produced for food, and the by-products are used as fertilizer and lastly to create green polyethylene, which is what we use to make our products.

2. Plastic made from pine oil in a mass-balance system. The second type of plastic is a certified renewable material based on a mass balance approach using pine oil. By using mass balance, we lower the CO₂footprint of our interdental brushes by 80%.

Besides using renewable resources, we also use renewable energy. All TePe’s production takes place at the manufacturing plant in Malmö, Sweden, by use of 100% renewable energy. Part of it comes from the company’s own rooftop solar power facility. Again, these initiatives are reducing the carbon footprint during the life cycle of the product.

As a company we aim to:

• Provide a life cycle assessment of all product and packaging materials to achieve zero carbon footprint.
• Shift to renewable/recycled materials in our products and packaging where possible
• Take a circular approach throughout operations and minimize waste
• Increase energy efficiency and keep using 100% renewable energy in our production