here's the lowdown on our fresh recyclable toothpaste tube and how you can join us in being kinder to our planet.
we're all about spreading the friendly vibes and are super excited to show you our recyclable toothpaste tube. your community may not yet accept tubes for recycling. check with your local community facilities for the latest info.
the hello tube is primarily made of HDPE (High Density Polyethylene), #2 plastic. the cap is made of PP (Polypropylene), #5 plastic.
no, this tube (and plastics in general) are not designed to be biodegradable. the #2 HDPE plastic used in our tubes is designed to be “circular,” so that the material can be re-processed into new products and packaging.
we are psyched to be transitioning our entire toothpaste portfolio to recyclable tubes. this effort began in 2022 and will be completed by 2025, so not all tubes will immediately be recyclable. if your tube doesn’t have #2 HDPE symbol on it, please don’t put it in your recycling bin. if your tube has this symbol, yay! check to see whether your community accepts tubes for recycling. if it does, squeeze out as much of the toothpaste from the tube as you can, put the cap back on, and place the tube in your recycling bin or wherever your community may recycle #2 HDPE plastics. please don’t cut open the tube to try and remove excess toothpaste! during the processing of the tube at the recycling facility, the tube is ground up and goes through a “rinsing” process, where all the residual toothpaste is washed off the plastic. so there’s no need for you to do any rinsing at home.
our plan is for all of our toothpaste tubes to be recyclable by the end of 2025. it takes time to make this transition, and during this time, some of our toothpastes will be in recyclable tubes while others won’t have transitioned yet. for now, make sure your tube has #2 HDPE icon before you recycle it.
once the tube is in the recycle stream, it gets sent to places like a materials recovery facility [MRF] where it would get sorted, then sent to a reprocessor who turns the tubes into little plastic pellets. these pellets can then get turned into new products and packaging! so you’re not actually saying goodbye to your favorite tube, just see ya later!
in 2019, our parent company Colgate-Palmolive Company’s first recyclable tube design earned recognition for technical recyclability from the APR (association of plastic recyclers), showing that tubes of the right design are compatible with HDPE #2 container recycling. we also tested the sortability of tubes; data show that our full size tubes are able to be successfully sorted with minimal mis-sorting.
