Colgate® Launches a New, More Ethical Toothpaste

Colgate® launches a new, more ethical toothpaste

The oral hygiene brandColgate® has launched a one of its kind toothpaste called Smile for Good.

The new product has a minimal number of ingredients and, in an industry first, lists each ingredient and clearly explains its purpose on the front of the pack.

What makes it even more appealing to the growing number of consumers that want to live a more ethical lifestyle, is the fact that this toothpaste is packaged in Colgate’s first-of-its-kind recyclable plastic tube, recognised by RecyClass.

The product is also SLS-free and has been certified by the Vegan Society, the FSC, and EcoCert, meaning the formula is responsibly made, is cruelty-free and most of the components are derived from natural sources.

Toothpaste alone accounts for an estimated 20 billion tubes around the world, annually, so Colgate-Palmolive is sharing its tube technology with competitors to help ensure that all packaging meets third-party recycling requirements.

Almost two-thirds of people are not aware that you cannot recycle toothpaste tubes as most are made from sheets of plastic laminate – usually a combination of different plastics – sandwiched around a thin layer of aluminium. The mix of materials makes it impossible to recycle through conventional methods. Smile for Good changes this, using High-Density Polyethylene (HDPE), the plastic used to make milk jugs and other plastic bottles that are already widely recycled.

Building on ongoing efforts to help people make small, sustainable changes for the better, including the launch of the Colgate Bamboo Charcoal Toothbrush and TerraCycle partnership, Smile for Good is a way Colgate is improving the sustainability profile of its products to help achieve its aim of 100 per cent recyclable packaging by 2025.

Chief executive officer and president of Colgate-Palmolive, Noel Wallace, commented: “Colgate wants to make tubes a part of the circular economy by keeping this plastic productive and eliminating waste. If we can standardise recyclable tubes among all companies, we all win. We want all toothpaste tubes – and eventually all kinds of tubes – to meet the same third-party recycling standards that we’ve achieved. We can align on these common standards for tubes and still compete with what’s inside them.”