Unilever Unveils Recyclable Toothpaste Tubes To Come Clean With The Environment
Image via monticello / Shutterstock.com
In recent years, Unilever—global conglomerate with 400 household brands to its name—has been giving its packaging and manufacturing processes a good rinse to help protect the planet. It is now introducing new toothpaste tubes in hopes of making all of its toothpaste tubes recyclable by 2025.
Starting with France and India, Unilever’s greatest markets, the company will be piloting a sustainable toothpaste tube design that has been four years in the making, Yanko Design reports. It will also share the design with other companies in hopes to inspire active adoption in the industry. With toothpaste as an indispensable everyday product, a widespread overhaul in packaging could do wonders for the environment.
Toothpaste tubes are usually constructed with plastic, along with an aluminum lining, for flexibility and prolonged shelf life. This comes at a cost for Earth, as the tubes would be difficult to recycle. Unilever’s solution is to use a material mostly consisting of High-Density Polyethylene (HDPE), “one of the most widely recyclable plastics globally.”
At 220-microns, HPDE is also the thinnest plastic material used by the toothpaste industry, including Colgate, which has started working with the component too.
The tubes are compatible with standard HDPE recycling streams, and can even be recycled easily by consumers.
Unilever also says that it is partnering with recycling organizations around the world to ensure that post-consumer toothpaste tubes are treated right. In France, for example, the tubes can be collected from consumers’ home recycle bins and repurposed into new products.
The company will begin testing the tubes with oral care brand Signal, before rolling out the design to India’s Pepsodent and CloseUp by the end of the year.
[via Yanko Design, cover image via monticello / Shutterstock.com]
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