Brushes spared bin to be made into...bins

A former waste worker is unveiling an ambitious recycling scheme that turns toothbrushes into bins that cost as little as £10 to produce.

Angus Carnie, 56, uses between 700 and 800 toothbrushes to create a 70L bin.

The toothbrushes are microwaved to sterilise them, then melted down, and finally compacted into blocks for molding.

Two billion toothbrushes are thrown away each year and many of them end up in the ocean, which Angus aims to combat with his new scheme.

Angus hopes that dentists and supermarkets will use his bins to collect used toothbrushes for recycling.

He said: “When you’re finished with your toothbrush, what do you do with it, other than buy a new one? If there was a facility to put it in people would use it.

“The average person on the street wants to do the right thing, but it’s got to be easy and it’s got to be simple.

“If you got people into the habit of taking their old toothbrush to the dentist with them and then buying a new one there, people would recycle it.”

Toothbrushes cannot go into normal recycling bins as they use different kinds of plastic in each part and they are quite difficult to recycle.

Angus added: “Toothbrushes kill and poison our oceans, there’s no doubt about that.

“The problem is that they’re brightly coloured, they float around and sea life think they’re fish and they’re attracted to them and that’s a big problem.”

Angus wants to roll out the scheme UK-wide in the next few weeks and hopes supermarkets will offer incentives such as 20% off their new toothbrush for returning an old one.

He lives in Carnoustie, Angus, in a house that he built himself from old McDonald’s wrappers earlier this year for just £15,000.

Angus Carnie with one of his bins.