Roncesvalles Dental Centre has taken a major step in going green — and they’re not compromising the quality of their dental products to do so.   The dental office is the latest business in Toronto to join TerraCycle’s Zero Waste Box program, an initiative that gives patients and community members the opportunity to recycle toothbrushes, toothpaste tubes, caps, packaging, and floss containers — items that cannot be recycled at home.   Office manager Leah Lavergne said the decision to join the initiative and put an oral care waste box in their office came from the influx of requests they were getting to supply bamboo toothbrushes to patients.   “That’s the big craze, and we know that there’s a problem with plastic toothbrushes and where they end up, and we didn’t want to contribute more and more and more, and so we wanted to find ways to reduce our carbon footprint, help the environment, give patients an option,” she said.   Lavergne added that the dental office couldn’t initially find a bamboo toothbrush that met their professional standards (though they just recently found one) and they also knew that some patients were loyal to the plastic toothbrushes they already used.   As a result, they decided joining the TerraCycle program was their best option.   “The community is pretty excited about it ... we’ve had a pretty positive response. We have a lot of businesses that are on board as well,” she said.   Shaye DiPasquale, of TerraCycle, said it's exciting to see more dental practices across Canada embracing their program.   “Collecting and recycling hard-to-recycle oral care waste doesn't have to be a difficult practice. It can be as straightforward as collecting your family's toothbrushes, empty floss containers and toothpaste tubes and dropping them off at your dentist's office during your next visit, thanks to the efforts of dental practices like Roncesvalles Dental Centre,” she said.   Lavergne said Roncesvalles Dental Centre also plans to work with local waste reduction group Roncy Reduces on further initiatives in the future.   Tina Soldovieri, founder of Roncy Reduces, said the TerraCycle program is a great start for the dental centre.   She added that not only does it provide the opportunity for people to recycle these difficult items, but it creates the opportunity for conversation and gets people thinking about how they can be more conscious about reducing their own footprint.   “I think (the initiative) is really cool, because we know all these items go to a landfill,” Soldovieri said. “And apart from that, most plastic, even if it is supposedly recyclable, goes in the landfill. But to send something to TerraCycle means you really don’t want it to go there — you’re not even taking the chance. I think that’s really cool because all of our toothbrushes will be (in the landfills) longer than we live.”