Australian toothbrush waste

Every article about toothbrush waste in this country quotes the same figure, and none of them say where it came from. We went looking for the original and couldn’t find one. So this is an attempt at a current number, with the method published as plainly as the result — because an estimate you can check is worth more than a statistic nobody can trace.

The method

Population, multiplied by how often people replace a brush, multiplied by what one brush weighs. Three inputs, one multiplication. The whole argument is about how defensible each input is, so here they are.

01 · Population

27,801,023 people. Estimated Resident Population at 31 December 2025, the most recent ABS release at time of writing. Australian Bureau of Statistics, National, state and territory population, December 2025.

02 · Replacement rate

2 to 4 brushes per person per year. No Australian study of actual replacement behaviour was found. The range is deliberately wide and the true figure is likely nearer the lower bound, since surveys consistently report people replacing less often than advised. This is the weakest input in the calculation and the reason the output is a range rather than a number.

03 · Mass of one brush

17 g, from a sample of 1. Individual weights: 17 g. One ordinary plastic toothbrush, weighed on digital kitchen scales to the nearest gram. A sample of one is small, and we would rather say so than pad it: manual toothbrushes cluster tightly around 15–20 g, so this input moves the answer far less than the replacement-rate range does. A BARE brush weighed the same 17 g, which is worth knowing on its own.

The figure everyone quotes doesn’t add up

Australian dental practices, eco retailers and news articles almost all cite the same pair of numbers: 30 million toothbrushes a year, amounting to 1,000 tonnes of landfill. We could not find an original source for it anywhere — it appears without attribution, or attributed to someone else repeating it.

It also doesn’t reconcile with itself. A thousand tonnes divided by 30 million brushes is about 33 grams per brush. We weighed one: 17 grams. Manual toothbrushes generally run 15 to 20 grams, so those two numbers cannot both describe ordinary toothbrushes. Either the count is roughly half what it should be, or the tonnage is roughly double.

Our own low estimate — 945 tonnes — happens to land near that familiar 1,000. The brush count doesn’t: at today’s population it takes upwards of 56 million brushes to get there, not 30 million. That is what you would expect of a figure that has been passed around unchanged while the population grew by several million people.

What this isn’t

It isn’t a measurement. Nobody counts toothbrushes into landfill, so any national figure is an estimate built on assumptions, including this one. The difference we’re claiming is that ours are written down and you can disagree with them specifically.

It also isn’t independent research. We sell toothbrushes, which gives us an obvious interest in this number being large. That’s exactly why the inputs are published — so you can check whether we leaned on the scale.

And it isn’t an argument that switching brushes makes the pile smaller. A bamboo brush weighs about the same as a plastic one — ours weighed the same 17 g as the plastic brush we measured. Changing what you brush with doesn’t reduce the tonnage; it changes what the tonnage is made of, and whether it is still there in a century. That’s a narrower claim than the one this page could have made, and it’s the true one.

Use it

Published under CC BY 4.0. Use it, quote it, republish it — the point is that a current Australian figure exists and can be traced. All we ask is a citation.

Cite as: The BARE Brush, Australian Toothbrush Waste Statistics 2026, v1.0, thebarebrush.com.au/statistics

Download the data (CSV) — every input, every derived figure, and the source for each.

Use the graphic

A ready-made version of the headline figure, free to republish in articles and posts under the same licence — just keep the credit line, or link back here.

Changelog

• 2026-08-25 — Citation metadata added: the dataset now carries a version identifier (v1.0) and machine-readable citations for the ABS population and replacement-guidance inputs. No figures changed.
• 2026-08-11 — First published. Unit mass measured (one brush, 17 g) and the figure released. Sample size of one is stated openly rather than padded; the intent is to weigh a larger sample and revise.
• 2026-08-10 — Method and inputs drafted. Population and replacement-rate inputs sourced; unit mass pending measurement, so no figure was published.