Smile File

Steve Hyde was chatting with his mother one day in 2011 about his brother's crazy idea to one day build a bicycle out of bamboo.

“He should make something useful like a bamboo toothbrush,” Hyde's mother remarked casually.

A Southwest Florida restaurant owner and operator hit hard by the recession, Hyde was immediately struck by his mom's remark. He rushed to his nearby drugstore. Hyde found the toothbrush section was full of plastic — no product was biodegradable. Turns out, Americans throw away more than 1 billion toothbrushes a year. Most end up in landfills. “There was an enormous hole in the market,” Hyde says he realized.