Want cleaner, whiter teeth?

Skip the Crest or Colgate – the latest technology in toothbrushes involves no toothpaste at all. Instead, the supreme cleaning power of the innovative new toothbrush comes from something absolutely free: Sunlight.

The Soladey toothbrush is a solar-powered gadget made from a titanium dioxide rod. When you brush your teeth with the toothbrush, the combination of sunlight and saliva create an ionic chemical reaction that swiftly acts to obliterate whatever plaque may be lurking in your mouth.

The hi-tech toothbrush was invented by a Canadian dentistry professor, Dr. Kunio Komiyama, and has been around since the 1980s, though the latest model is twice as effective as the earlier version. In tests on lab cultures, Komiyama told CanWest New Service, "you see complete destruction of bacterial cells."

But we won't have to take his word for it much longer – the dentist has recruited a group of over 100 teenagers to test out the new-and-improved solar brush to see how well it stacks up to a normal toothbrush.

We'll wait until results are in, but if it means we'll never again get frustrated when attempting to squeeze that teeny last little bit of toothpaste out of the tube, maybe it's time to go solar.