Bentonite Clay Toothpaste

A personal care product that has the scourge of disposability inflicted upon it is toothpaste. The plastic tubes serve little to no purpose once emptied of their contents and I would normally just toss it in the bin when finished.

To overcome this cycle of corporate sponsorship and consumerist activity I investigated ways to make my own toothpaste. Many formulations presented themselves after little research. Over some time trialling different combinations I have retained a few recipes that work well for me and I cycle through them for variety. This is my first Bentonite Clay toothpaste.

This recipe is a straight bentonite clay formulation. The original recipe had equal portions of bentonite clay powder and water. I found that mix too pasty for my liking.

You can see in this picture that 2 tablespoons of clay and 2 of water mix together to form quite a thick and gluggy paste that can support its own form. This didn't appeal to me so I doubled the water and that made it better but still not right so I added 8 tablespoons of water in total to 2 tablespoons of bentonite clay powder. This made a watery mix.

At first I thought I had added too much water but wasn't fussed about that because I prefer my coconut oil toothpaste when warmer weather melts it. So I left the mix as was and added 5 drops each of peppermint and spearmint essential oil and closed the lid and left overnight.

The following morning when I went to use the toothpaste I noticed a change in the consistency of the mixture. It has turned into a soft soufflé or mousse consistency. I dipped the brush in and took a scoop and oh my, best toothpaste yet! I got a couple of weeks from this size of mix. The consistency didn't change the whole time and was pleasant to use. I will be experimenting further with bentonite clay.