SURI Toothbrush review: ‘I tried the plant-based electric toothbrush that’s fully recyclable’ (2024)

Did you know every year over four billion toothbrushes end up in landfill? And it's not just the manual variety we're talking about here. Years of electric toothbrushes being made with non-recyclable plastic components and batteries have led to a gargantuan level of waste.

Enter: SURI.

SURI is a sustainable dental care brand that has created an environmentally friendly electric toothbrush. The head is made from corn starch and castor oil and the body is modular so that it can be taken apart and repaired if it breaks.

There's been a bit of buzz online about this product, so we've put together a comprehensive SURI review so you can give the toothbrush a test drive by proxy before you commit to making a purchase.

How we tested: I swapped my regular electric toothbrush to a SURI electric toothbrush for three months.

Pros:

• Competitive price point
• Four colours to choose from
• Comes with self-cleaning travel case (for an extra £20)
• Includes magnetic mirror mount
• Gentle on the teeth and gums
• Soft bristles
• Free to recycle brush heads in the US and UK
• Plant-based brush head
• Repairable aluminium body
• 40 day battery life
• Quiet

Cons:

• No pressure warning
• Only comes with one brush head

How to use a SURI toothbrush

If you’ve used a standard electric toothbrush before I have good news for you: You’re all trained up to use the SURI model. The brush is just as simple to use as any other electric toothbrush, you charge it up, load up your toothpaste and get to brushing.

It will vibrate four times during your session: Once each time you should move sections in your mouth. It gives you 30 seconds per section: bottom left, bottom right, top left, top right (or however else you want to divide it up).

SURI toothbrush review

I've now been using the SURI electric toothbrush for about three months, and I'm not planning on going back any time soon. I've broken down my experience into different categories so I can get granular about each aspect of the brush, if you're not interested in that kind of detail and want a one sentence review here you go:

The SURI toothbrush will give you just as good of a clean as a regular electric toothbrush while taking a far more sustainable approach.

Packaging and delivery

SURI offers free express shipping for UK customers who spend over £25, so within a couple of days of ordering my brush had arrived.

The packaging was sleek and well designed with the toothbrush, brush head, UV-travel case and mirror mount all fitting into a letterbox friendly package.

User experience

Once I'd unpackaged my new brush I put it on the charging stand for the recommended four hours. One of my favourite things about the SURI toothbrush is the battery life, with one charge giving you enough juice to last about 40 days. By my calculations that means you should only have to charge your brush about 9 times a year, which is a big win for those who constantly forget to charge their toothbrush (me).

In the past the eco-friendly manual brushes I'd used had been made with harsh bristles that resulted in my gums bleeding. The SURI brush heads are made with medium/soft bristles that are much more gentle than the one's I'd used before.

One thing I will say is as someone who tends to be a little firm with their brushing technique, I do wish SURI had a pressure sensor of some sort to alert me when I'm going a little hard.

The accompanying mirror mount is surprisingly handy, and I'm thoroughly taking advantage of the extra bench space. The mount has a sticky back that firmly sticks to your mirror and stops the bottom of your brush accumulating any of that gross muck that can build up when it's sitting on a traditional mount.

UV-travel case

Toothbrushes coming with travel cases isn't anything new, but this travel case has a couple of extra bells and whistles. Namely, the ability to kill 99.9% of harmful bacteria in just a minute.

The case does this with it's powerful built-in UV-C LED light. As the brush already has 40 days of battery life per charge this isn't a charging case, and needs to be plugged in to be used.

Are SURI toothbrushes any good?: The final verdict

If you’re after an eco-friendly and effective electric toothbrush, look no further than SURI. The brand’s ethos is ‘keep the planet as clean as your teeth’ and in a world where so many businesses are adopting greenwashing practices we respect one that practises what they preach.

SURI has managed to create something truly unique: an environmentally friendly toothbrush that gives your teeth a proper clean.

FAQs

The SURI story

I asked the founders, Mark Rushmore and Gyve Safavi, about the inspiration behind SURI, and they said they’d ‘both been working in the personal care industry for over a decade before deciding to launch SURI. Throughout that time, we encountered a market over-saturated with clunky, unattractive and gimmicky electric toothbrushes made from single-use plastic’.

After a chance encounter brought the founders together, they discovered that ‘there is a global sustainability issue facing the personal care industry. After further research on the impact of oral health care products specifically, we estimated that over 4 billion toothbrushes are thrown away each year globally, and almost all are unable to be recycled. This means that every toothbrush you’ve ever owned, still exists’. A scary thought indeed.

After noticing that consumers were leaning towards eco-conscious shopping habits (such as manual bamboo toothbrushes) but seeing a gap for a sustainable electric toothbrush they ‘set out to create an electric toothbrush that champions design and sustainability – without compromising on performance’.

Is SURI really sustainable?

This was one of the first questions I put to the founders, and they clarified: 'We’ve taken the electric toothbrush back to its original principles, by rethinking the materials and ridding it of unnecessary, gimmicky technology. Our innovative brush uses recyclable plant-based heads made from cornstarch, with medium/soft bristles made using castor oil. The sleek aluminium brush handle is light, durable and recyclable, and is intentionally designed to be taken apart and repaired by us so your brush will spend more time in your bathroom and less time in a landfill'.

They added that the sustainability doesn't end there, saying 'we take full responsibility for the lifecycle of our product, by making the recycling process as simple as possible for our customers. Every toothbrush comes with a prepaid compostable mailer, so customers can easily return their used plant-based heads to us to be recycled properly, without facing any expense'.

The B-Corp certified brand is also 'committed to reducing and offsetting our carbon footprint. All of our packaging is plastic-free, FSC-certified recyclable, and we partner with ClimatePartner to offset 100% of our brushes' emissions, including their manufacture and transportation'.

What makes a SURI electric toothbrush different from all the other electric toothbrushes on the market?

The founders or SURI obviously know their brand better than anyone else, so I was interested to hear what they felt really set them apart from the competition. They said 'it’s our unique combination of design aesthetics, pioneering sustainability standards and best-in-class performance that sets us apart. Our toothbrush has been purposefully crafted to look beautiful in your home and turn an uninspiring chore into a mindful daily ritual'.

Along with the sustainability and design aspects, the brand carried out thousands of interviews with customers to find what they valued which led them to lean away from 'gymicky' LED screens and Bluetooth apps and focus on functional features like an extra-long battery life, magnetic mirror mount and UV-cleaning case.

You can take a look at the SURI website here if you fancy picking one up for yourself.