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Colgate's 9 Billion Toothpaste Tubes Defy Effort To Recycle Them (bloomberg.com) 76

Posted by msmash from the closer-look dept.
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. From a report: 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.
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Colgate's 9 Billion Toothpaste Tubes Defy Effort To Recycle Them More

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

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  • Lead tubes are recyclable...

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by jonadab ( 583620 )
      Eh, forget lead. Make the tubes out of gold foil. I guarantee they will get recycled.

    • Lead tubes are recyclable...

      They also had wonderful "squeezability", as TFS puts it, which I have yet to see matched by any plastic tube. I wonder if heavy metal leachings in the toothpaste also had cavity-fighting properties?

      Speaking of questionable toiletry packaging, I also remember when shampoo came in slippery glass bottles. Going back to that could also help address our plastic waste issues.

    • Lead would be a bit poisonous - I'm sure metal tubes were, and for many other uses still are, aluminium (that's with two "i", please note), which is probably the easiest material to separate and recycle.

  • On the face of it it's absurd to think anyone is going to remember to recycle a toothpaste tube, or for recyclers to specially handle that...

    However does it matter? It seems like the work has value in that it would be more friendly materials for a landfill, so it's OK to have people throw it out anyway.

    • If they had gone from plastic to something that is biodegradable. But HDPE?

      "HDPE: Compared to the low density one, high-density polyethylene has tougher chemical structure, even when both are Polyethylene-based. As a cling wrap, it takes 450 years to decompose HDPE through landfill. "

      Ooof.

      • As a cling wrap, it takes 450 years to decompose HDPE through landfill.

        Oh hmm - I guess then they should have embarked on a plan to build housing for the homeless from used toothpaste tubes....

        I don't understand why the engineering effort was not for a good biodegradable tube... that seems like a tough thing in a bathroom product that constantly contacts water though.

        • I wonder if we couldn't make some kind of plastic whose degradation is activated by something we could sprinkle on landfills. Like sprinkling lime on a mass grave.

    • People do not specifically remember specifically to recycle the toothpaste tube, they do separation and toss the toothpaste tube with the plastics. Progress discussed in TFS is that now the toothpaste tubes are HDPE instead of some weird plastics, so toothpaste tubes get to go with other HDPE bottles (e.g. detergent, milk) and processed accordingly. It s good news. We need to reduce the number of different plastics in use to improve our ability to recycle them in practice.

      • Which the article clearly says doesnâ(TM)t get recycled. The problem isnâ(TM)t that they just leave out the toothpaste tube.

          I think I use less toothpaste tubes than milk jugs and various soaps and detergents.

        • Which the article clearly says doesnâ(TM)t get recycled.

          HDPE is recycled into those plastic water pipes worldwide. The article says "Many sorting centers around the US don't accept them". It raises awareness on problems with local politics in some communities in the US. Colgate is a technological company and addressed the technological part by making the tube easier to recycle than before. There are apparently political problems in some communities in the US, now it's up to you to raise the question during public sessions of your city council or any other simila

    • On the face of it it's absurd to think anyone is going to remember to recycle a toothpaste tube, or for recyclers to specially handle that...

      However does it matter? It seems like the work has value in that it would be more friendly materials for a landfill, so it's OK to have people throw it out anyway.

      No, we should build large recycling points on the outskirts of towns to recycle toothpaste tubes. Then people can drive to the recycling point in their SUV each time they have an empty toothpaste tube!

  • Don't even bother (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Viol8 ( 599362 ) on Friday December 09, 2022 @01:25PM (#63117204) Homepage

    Unless its paper, metal or glass then rubbish should if possible simply be burnt to generate power and reclaim at least some of the energy that went into it.

    Plastic recycling is hopelessly inefficient energy wise and materials wise since there's only a few times a given piece of plastic can go through the loop before it ends up and cheap carpet - that no one wants. There are a few exceptions such as PET but most plastic will end up as landfill eventually anyway and IMO better its burnt for fuel and so save on burning coal/oil/gas in its place , than it ends up as pollution in the enviroment.

    YMMV.

  • Toothpaste tubes? Really? Our world is so finely tuned that recycling toothpaste tubes is a newsworthy issue? Incinerate them and be done with it.

    • wait, are the tubes still lined with aluminum (with plastic inner coating) like they were most my life? Haven't paid attention

      • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

        by jonadab ( 583620 )
        No idea. I haven't used toothpaste in decades. It turns out, you can just brush your teeth with water, and it works fine.

        On the other hand, if you live in a benighted community with a grandfather clause from hell that prevents you from having fluoride in your water, then you need to buy the fluoride mouth wash and use it regularly, or else your teeth will all go to pieces no matter how much you brush them. Ask me how I know. (I never had a cavity, until I moved to this town...)

        • Fluoride is poison and not even 20 years ago the recommended level was halved for reasons of the danger of bad health effects.

          Plenty of European cities have no fluoride in their water and no tooth decay problem. It's unnecessary, a U.S. chemical cartel thing the less educated dentists were bought into

    • In terms of low hanging fruit this is the star on the Christmas tree.

    • Our world is so finely tuned that recycling toothpaste tubes is a newsworthy issue?

      Our world is wildly out of tune. The only way to tune it again is to resolve the problems, one by one. Think of about the plastic straws, the plastic cutlery, the plastic packaging, the plastic bags... people complain everytime it s some sort of irrelevant amount. It s only irrelevant when isolated. Put together, it s billions of tons. The Colgate toothpaste tubes alone amount to 270 million tonnes per year (9e9 tubes according to TFS, 30 g per empty plastic tube according to my balance).

  • Must be worldwide.

    Either that, or some people use a ridiculous amount of toothpaste per brush.

    I'm pretty sure most people don't burn through a whole tube of toothpaste every other week...

    • Most people put on as much toothpaste as they see on the box or in ads, which is about three to four times what you actually need. It just needs to be about the size of a pea.

  • Wondered what was new; I am particular about one type of Colgate, and it's hard to find, so I always buy a year at a time. New batch the tube was noticeably different. It resists compression, slightly, and doesn't want to stay squished. It makes getting the last 20% out much more difficult. Not a fan.

    • Put flat on counter. Press your toothbrush handle against it firmly. Run the handle up the tube. This will be sufficient for a few weeks. Once you've got the easy pickings, continue on further brushings by folding over the tube each time and pushing up with thumb towards end. Once that starts hurting your thumb and you're only getting a smidgin out, replace the tube. Recyclable tubes make it look a bit more difficult than old fashioned but you should be able to get far closer than 20%.

      • The old fashioned metal tubes were actually pretty good for this. If you could refrain from squeezing the middle of the tube, and instead start squeezing *from the back of the tube* they worked great, and they certainly never suffered from the problem the parent describes of the tube "not wanting to stay squished."

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by dfm3 ( 830843 )
        And why am I doing all this, including literally hurting my thumbs, if the tube is just going to end up in the same waste stream as the much easier-to-use traditional foil lined tube? I bought one of these Colgate tubes some time ago because I had a coupon, and the design is obnoxious (especially if you travel with it or it gets knocked over and the toothpaste flows away from the base). At some point I start to wonder why it's so much effort to get the toothpaste out and I end up discarding product that I p

  • Tom's of Maine (Colgate) does this now (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Khopesh ( 112447 ) on Friday December 09, 2022 @01:36PM (#63117236) Homepage Journal

    Tom's of Maine has had a recyclable toothpaste tube [tomsofmaine.com] for a year or two. I was going to post that Colgate-Palmolive was therefore not first, but then I saw that they own Tom's of Maine. So instead of some sort of "first post!" claim, I instead provide that link as showing more about how this works.

    • Tom's of Maine has had a recyclable toothpaste tube [tomsofmaine.com] for a year or two.

      There are apparently also plenty of Waste Free Toothpastes [amazon.com] available as chewable tablets or power, that come in minimal or easily-recyclable containers.

    • I switched from toothpaste to a good alcohol-based mouthwash with flouride at the advice of my dentist. Alcohol will dissolve plaque. Toothpaste is just abrasives that help scrape it off. If you had a pot with sugar caked on the inside, would you grab a scouring pad or just put some hot water in it? You still have to actually brush, like when something water soluble is caked on a pan, but it's way better.

      Try it. Seriously. It's not hard. Better teeth, and easier recycling of the bottle afterward. An

    • More and more the idea that plastic is recyclable is turning into a myth.

    • Want energy? Dig shit up and burn it.

      Finished with something? Crush it up and burn it.

      High temperature incinerators are where most of our non-reclaimable household refuse ends up. Do you really believe it goes to landfill or recycling? Plastics are difficult to recycle. Geez, glass is hard enough. Paper often deteriorates too much before it can be recycled. And before you begin, who is going to do all that sorting?

      We burn it. Nearly all of it. And release it into the air.

  • There's plenty of lower hanging fruit. Put more water fountains around so people don't have to buy plastic bottles of water.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by jonadab ( 583620 )
      Eh, where I live, every public building has at least one drinking fountain in it, and most have at least one per floor. Scads of people still buy bottled water, because the marketing has them believing that it's better than tapwater somehow. Nevermind that it _is_ tapwater from wherever it was bottled, and that location is not disclosed on the packaging. It's bottled, so it must be better, because the commercials kind of implied that it might be better, so it must be so.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by djinn6 ( 1868030 )

        They still taste wildly different. Drinking fountains could be significantly improved by adding something similar to Brita filters.

        But given how little people care about their maintenance, I'm not keeping my hopes up. Not to mention even if installed, I often find ones that just don't work, or the pressure's so low you have to lick the fountain like a cat.

  • which goes to show you (Score:3)

    by argStyopa ( 232550 ) on Friday December 09, 2022 @02:08PM (#63117398) Journal

    ...that no system based on even the best-intended altruism is really sustainable, particularly where bureaucracy becomes deeply involved.

    Complain all you like but real people work for profit, and government (while a necessary evil) is an obstruction.

  • I get my toothpaste in a glass jar. First purchase came with a little metal spoon to scoop it out. There's supposed to be a return path once you've collected a few jars so they can be reused, which would mean no recycling required. The same company also does a tooth powder instead of paste which is more efficient, didn't like it at the start but it has grown on me a bit.

    • Actually toothpaste in a glass jar is a great idea! There is no reason why we have to squeeze it other than it being a century old habit. Scooping it up with a little spoon and putting it on your toothbrush ain't much more work. It's like DST-the only reason we still have DST is because we've always been doing it that way.

      But it'll never catch on because it's too simple, and obvious, to implement.

  • I don't remember the last time I shopped for toothpaste. Probably when travelling, picking up an airport sized tube for carry-on.

    Meanwhile the pile of cardboard boxes that come to the house and exit via the recycle bin is absurd.
    If Amazon chose to deliver that stuff in a reusable box, then pick it back up later when their vans drive by, it would save way more in a day than all the toothpaste tubes in a year. It would address maybe 70% if the total cardboard being thrown away.

    It's not uncommon to have the th

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by EvilSS ( 557649 )

      If Amazon chose to deliver that stuff in a reusable box, then pick it back up later when their vans drive by, it would save way more in a day than all the toothpaste tubes in a year. It would address maybe 70% if the total cardboard being thrown away

      I would pay extra for this if Amazon offered it.

      • If Amazon chose to deliver that stuff in a reusable box, then pick it back up later when their vans drive by, it would save way more in a day than all the toothpaste tubes in a year. It would address maybe 70% if the total cardboard being thrown away

        I would pay extra for this if Amazon offered it.

        I could certainly amortize the cost against the extra I have to pay for a larger recycle bin.

  • and it's Colgate's fault.

  • The solution is simple. (Score:4, Interesting)

    by rickb928 ( 945187 ) on Friday December 09, 2022 @02:43PM (#63117510) Homepage Journal

    Give the process away. When all toothpaste tubes are recyclable by the same process, it can happen. Until then, though the great lie in recycling is proven again.

  • Clam shells are made from 100% the exact same material as plastic bottles. Plastic bottles are recycled. Clam shells are not. In fact they are considered to contaminate the recycling stream. This problem needs to be solved long before toothpaste tubes. Toothpaste tubes are both much lower in volume and harder to recycle.

  • Plasma torch and mass spectrometer. Everything recycles when it is reduced to basic elements.

  • I buy toothpaste in standard 200-liter drums (55 US gallon). I simply fill a glass peanut butter jar with a reasonable portion and place on the countertop of each bathroom in my home.

    More seriously, if toothpaste were distributed in a single-use pure silicone squeeze bottle. Where you have to clip the top before use, rather than have a mix of multiple materials to make a replaceable cap. Then you could at least easily recycle the silicone into something else, mostly something less valuable like playground m

  • That's ok. The purpose wasn't recycling, but to get useful idiots in service to corrupt politicians looking for kickbacks off their ass.

    I assume I will be modded up so much it will wrap around to 0xFF aka -1 very quickly.

  • "HDPE, the recyclable plastic used for products such as milk jugs."
    I'm pretty sure that the plastic used for milk jugs is LDPE (Low Density Polyethylene), not the high density variety.

    • Nope, #4 LDPE is flexible, #2 HDPE is stiff. The trend continues with ultra high molecular weight (UMHW) whhich is used for non-ice rinks, and various industrial purposes.

  • Why do we need toothpaste, rather than old-fashioned tooth powder? You wanna be green, use toothpowder. Or baking soda -- just as good if not better. Many toothpastes are overly abrasive.

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