How Bite Toothpaste Bits Went Plastic-Free

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One of the scariest things about microplastics is how they’re in everything. They’re not just in the obvious places, like food containers and packaging; no, these days we find microplastics in food itself, in pads and tampons, in clothes, in our water supply. Microplastics have been linked with harmful effects on human health (and the environment), so the feeling that we can’t get away from them is a stressful one.

The trick, says Lindsay McCormick, is to make smart, simple, strategic swaps. “The biggest thing is to eliminate your daily exposures where you can,” she tells SheKnows.

McCormick knows what she’s talking about, because she’s one of the people making those swaps possible. McCormick is the founder and CEO of Bite, the plastic-free body care line she started in 2018 from her living room after getting frustrated with going through so many travel-sized toothpaste tubes. “This is so wasteful,” she remembered thinking. After a few unsuccessful experiments with tooth powders, she started formulating her own toothpaste “bits” — tablets that you bite down on and chew to produce a foam you can brush with.

These days, Bite not only sells these popular toothpaste tabs — which come in fluoride and fluoride-free varieties, and flavors like mint and berry — but also whitening gel, bamboo toothbrushes, and floss, with all products and packaging 100 percent plastic-free. More recently, Bite has expanded into aluminum-free deodorants in metal (not plastic, and definitely not cardboard) cases.

Bite’s deodorant line was inspired by McCormick’s personal experience using cardboard deodorants, which would get soggy after a few weeks’ use. Bite’s version houses the deodorant insert in a cardboard tube, but in turn sets that in a metal case. You can refill the deodorant portion when it runs dry. “I wanted products that were, functional and sustainable and effective, but also beautiful,” McCormick explains.

McCormick founded Bite (which stands for Because It’s the Earth) to help the environment, after watching piles of plastic wash up on the beach during her time as a surf instructor. It was only later, as more research on microplastics was released, that she realized her products could help human health too. “What happens in the ocean eventually happens in our blood,” she says. Everything is connected. The world feels big, but it’s actually “a very contained ecosystem,” she says. “Everything we do has ripple effects.”