This former TV producer has solved toothpaste’s sustainability problems

While traveling for work as a TV producer two years ago, Lindsay McCormick noticed the number of travel-size toothpastes she was throwing away every month. Horrified, she began tinkering with alternatives, such as jarred toothpaste powder and dried toothpaste balls piped from pastry bags. “At the time, this was just a hobby,” she says. But shortly after McCormick splurged on a tablet-making machine and began selling her chewable product via Etsy and a website, she was featured in a Women’s Health video that went viral, and sales skyrocketed. The company, Bite Toothpaste Bits, did more than $3 million in revenue in 2019. Despite receiving several acquisition and investment offers (including one from Mark Cuban when she appeared on Shark Tank), and the introduction of competing products from Colgate and Unilever, McCormick and cofounder and COO Asher Hunt have retained 100% ownership of the company—enabling them to make environment-first choices about the product that might temporarily affect the bottom line but ultimately make the product more sustainable, such as dropping palm oil from its ingredient list. McCormick believes that this degree of commitment to sustainable practices (the product is also vegan, comes in fully recyclable jars, and is produced locally in L.A.) will give Bite an edge.