Most likely, Diego Stocco will either inspire you or make you feel like a totally boring and uncreative slug. As a composer/musician, his instruments of choice have included a tree, sand, a piano on fire and the contents of his local drycleaners, as captured in this video, further proving his point that "you can really make music with everything."

Last Christmas, I discovered a Preserve toothbrush in my stocking. I can get close-minded when it comes to changing my routine but this arrived at a perfect moment; I had already concluded that all non-electric toothbrushes work basically the same and I was trying to transition my grooming products to those with less hostile chemical formulas. Having a BPA-free toothbrush that was made out of recycled yogurt cups fit right in.

At the time, the toothbrush packaging was meant to double as a travel case and the brush could be sent back to the manufacturer for further recycling once its cleaning days were over. Produced since 1997, I'm guessing not very many brushes were returned because Preserve recently overhauled the packaging to further encourage user participation in the next stage of the brush's lifecycle. The brushes are now available in a slim envelope, complete with prepaid postage, so as long as you save it, you can then slip the brush back in and mail it out for free. 

In the excellent documentary Objectified, there's a segment that features a group of designers at IDEO tasked with redesigning the toothbrush. It's not clear if there's a specific client behind the project or what, but I'll be honest, this portion of the film made me cringe. 

Having received most of my design education in the Bay Area, I learned to revere IDEO as the kind of firm a thinking designer would kill to work for. That said, there's something about actually witnessing a group of smart people, surrounded by Post-it notes, throwing out random (and sometimes idiotic) contributions to a brainstorming session on What Is The Toothbrush? that could give easy ammunition to those less inclined toward appreciating the societal contributions of designers. After much discussion and prototyping, the result was revealed: a toothbrush with a wooden handle. End scene. 

Why, if, or by whom the brush would be manufactured (or its price point) were not addressed. Without that information, and unlike a lot of the other case studies in the documentary, it appeared as a case of design for design's sake—a case, I believe, in which it would have been best to not have peeked behind the velvet curtain at all. 

What does all that have to do with Preserve? Unlike its wooden-handled brethren, to me this toothbrush is the product of smart design executed with an eye on the broader context and user-ability of the final object. It cleans teeth. It's recycled and recyclable, and the packaging makes it easy to follow-through on this. And, perhaps most importantly, it's available at Trader Joe's for $3.

To top it all off, Continuum, the design and consultancy firm behind the updated Preserve packaging, won the 2011 Cooper Hewitt National Design Award for Product Design. 

Now if you'll excuse me, I have to put my used Preserve in the mail.