Colgate’s 9 Billion Toothpaste Tubes Defy Effort To Recycle Them

Colgate-Palmolive spent years devising a recyclable toothpaste tube. Pulling it off was a technical masterstroke, substituting plastic for a mix of materials that was historically tough to reclaim. The result, one executive said, was “nice squeezability.” One big problem remains: Many sorting centers around the US don’t accept them. The gap between Colgate’s engineering success and the practicalities of where-do-we-toss-our-empties underscores a persistent challenge for corporate America: Switching to packaging that can bypass landfills isn’t enough if there is no easy way to recycle it. In Colgate’s case, that is 9 billion tubes a year requiring extra effort to avoid the trash heap.

The new tubes, which currently cover 78% of the company’s US toothpaste lineup, are made with HDPE, the recyclable plastic used for products such as milk jugs. But in the fragmented US system, companies making recyclable products have to persuade a wide range of stakeholders, from local governments to private companies, to accept the items, sort them and turn them into something new. It’s a process that can take years. The tubes still aren’t classified as recyclable by How2Recycle, an organization that issues standardized labels with instructions on how to dispose of packaging.