How Close Can Toothpaste Get to Zero Waste?

It may seem ridiculous to start with toothpaste tubes. But believe it or not, in a house with a 7- and 9-year-old (soon to be 8 and 10), we go through a lot of kids’ toothpaste. So much that the kids sometimes collect the empty tubes, which we then have to find ways to covertly throw away.

Either way, they keep piling up in our trash, and that doesn’t feel great. We should be better than this by now. A lot of effort has gone into better options, and into making the tube itself recyclable. There’s got to be a better way.

That’s the question behind this series: how close can the everyday stuff we use get to zero waste? So why start with toothpaste tubes? Probably because I threw out two in the last week and it’s still stuck in my head. :) Let’s dig in!

The default: the squeeze tube

Walk into any Target, Safeway or Walmart and you’ll quickly see that the tube is the default. Tubes are everywhere, and they’re not going away anytime soon. The numbers back that up: US toothpaste tablet sales were about $34 million in 2024, against a US toothpaste market of roughly $5.5 billion in 2025. That puts the main zero-waste alternative at well under 1% of the market.

The problem is what the tube is made of. Traditional tubes layer several plastics around a thin sheet of aluminum to protect the flavor and fluoride. Those layers can’t be separated, so the tubes can’t be recycled. By Colgate’s own estimate, about 20 billion tubes are sold worldwide each year, and most have gone to landfill.

Here’s the frustrating part: the tube has largely been redesigned already.

The alternatives

Recyclable tubes: the design works, the system doesn’t yet. Colgate built a tube from HDPE, the same plastic as milk jugs, and it was the first to be recognized by outside recycling authorities as recyclable. Colgate then shared the technology with competitors, and today 90% of toothpaste tubes on the US market are designed to be recyclable.

I’ve known for a while that toothpaste tubes aren’t recyclable. It’s confusing, though, because now the packaging says they are. I’m sure plenty of people toss them in the recycling bin hoping for the best, even when their local hauler says not to.

The problem is that recyclable doesn’t mean recycled. A class action lawsuit argues that few sorting facilities accept these tubes, so very few people can actually recycle them curbside. The court certified a class of California buyers in April 2026, and trial is set for April 2028.

What’s not clear to me is why there isn’t a bigger effort underway to build the processing infrastructure needed to actually recycle them.

Tablets: no tube at all, but a habit to break. Tablets come in jars or refill pouches and skip the tube entirely. What holds them back is low awareness and complaints about taste and texture, along with limited research comparing them to regular toothpaste. People have used paste their whole lives.

I’ve actually tried tablets. Around the same time, I also switched to bamboo replacement heads for my electric toothbrush. My gums got inflamed, and my dentist started recommending deep cleanings. I honestly don’t know if it was the tablets, the brush heads, the combination, or just that point in my life. But since going back to tube toothpaste, my gums have been completely fine. (I did also get that deep cleaning, so who knows.) Either way, it’s the kind of experience that makes it easy to go back to what you know.

Refillable dispensers: reuse instead of recycle. A reusable pump paired with refills that are meant to be composted. Suri’s system uses plant-based refills designed to be home-compostable, each lasting about a month, and Happier Beauty and Mighty offer similar setups. Like tablets, they ask people to change a habit and pay up front.

Aluminum tubes: a material recyclers actually want. Brands like Dr. Sheffield’s and Davids have moved to aluminum, which has real scrap value, unlike plastic. The tradeoffs are cost and effort: Dr. Sheffield’s CEO acknowledges plastic tubes are cheaper, and recycling a Davids tube means cutting it open and cleaning it out first.

The paths forward

After looking at the alternatives, I see three ways this could get better. None is perfect, but they all seem worth exploring.

Path 1: Fix how tubes get processed. This is the one I keep coming back to. Most tubes on shelves are already designed to be recycled. What’s missing is sorting facilities that will accept them and recyclers that can handle them. It seems like a chicken-and-egg problem. Facilities want enough tubes coming through to justify investing, but brands need facilities to accept the tubes before that volume can build. Mail-back programs like TerraCycle’s Colgate-sponsored one show that collection and recycling are possible when someone pays for it, but enrollment is capped. We’ve figured out how to redesign the tube. Why haven’t we figured out what to do with it afterward?

Path 2: Make reuse mainstream. Tablets and refillable dispensers avoid the tube problem altogether. But getting people to switch is another story. They need to taste good, feel familiar enough, cost less to get started, and be easy to find in stores. I’d also want more research showing they work as well as regular toothpaste. After my experience with tablets, hearing that from my dentist would matter a lot more to me than hearing it from a toothpaste brand.

Path 3: Switch to a material with value. Aluminum is interesting because recyclers already have a reason to collect it. The problem is that aluminum tubes cost more, and people have to empty and clean them before recycling. Could a big toothpaste brand make aluminum tubes affordable and easier to recycle? Maybe. I’d like to understand what’s stopping that from happening.

If I were a betting man, I’d say the easiest path is to keep the tube people already use and make recycling it actually possible. Maybe that’s store take-back programs, or someone like Ridwell offering a collection service just for toothpaste tubes. I don’t know what it would take to make that work at scale, but it seems like a question worth asking.

What’s next

Next, I want to talk to the people working on these ideas, starting with toothpaste tube recycling. I want to understand what’s really in the way and what it would take to fix it. If you’re working on this, or have an idea I missed, I’d love to hear from you.

Sources

Where should this question take us next? Suggest a guest, share evidence, or challenge an assumption. Know a company whose demonstrated progress deserves recognition? Nominate it for the awards.