The archive · Design & Visual · Product decision · 2022
Colgate's Recycle Me! tube makes its recyclable toothpaste pack ask to be recycled
Colgate's first recyclable toothpaste tube carries bold Recycle Me! graphics aimed at shoppers and the facilities that sort plastic.
Colgate
What it had to solve
Colgate created its first recyclable tube to help cut the estimated 20 billion plastic toothpaste tubes thrown in the trash every year. But making a tube recyclable and making sure it is recycled are two different things — the message had to reach the people who decide what happens to it.
How it works
Colgate set out to reduce the estimated 20 billion plastic toothpaste tubes thrown in the trash every year by creating its first recyclable tube. But being completely recyclable and ensuring those tubes are recycled are two different things, so the pack itself had to carry the message.
The Recycle Me! Tube was created with dynamic limited-edition graphics and bold messaging, designed to build awareness among two audiences at once: the consumers buying toothpaste and the facilities that sort plastic for recycling.
Because the instruction lived on the product, it reached the right people at the right moments — the shopper at the shelf and the sorter at the recycling line. The work is filed in the D&AD awards archive under Packaging Design.
Why it lands
- Decades of non-recyclable tubes have trained shoppers and sorters to discard them, so the pack must break that reflex.
- The message travels free on every unit, reaching buyers and facilities without a separate media plan.
- Speaking to sorting facilities matters because recyclability only counts when the material stream actually accepts the tube.
- Limited-edition graphics give the instruction a reason to be noticed instead of becoming package clutter.
What it did
The package itself became the awareness campaign, carrying the instruction to recycle on every tube a shopper and a sorter would see. The work is filed in the D&AD awards archive under Packaging Design.
What you can take
A sustainability fix only works if the people downstream know it exists — put the instruction on the object itself, where both the buyer and the sorter who decides its fate will meet it.
Since then
The recyclable tube rolled out in the US in 2022 and is filed in the D&AD awards archive under Packaging Design; the archive records no recycling-rate figures. The transferable decision is to treat the package as the medium, teaching everyone in the loop — buyer and sorter — that the material has changed.
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