Toothpaste Tube Pollution: The facts

You may never have thought about what happens to your toothpaste tube once you’re finished with it. Many of us, with good intention, wash out the tube when it’s run out and place it into our recycling bin. The truth is, generic toothpaste tubes are made from a combination of materials, including crude oil and aluminum, which makes them non-recyclable. Those toothpaste tubes have a big impact on our planet. Here are the facts: 


1.5 billion toothpaste tubes are discarded worldwide each year, and those tubes end up in landfills or worse, in our precious oceans. 


10 million tons of plastic are dumped in our oceans annually - that’s equal to more than a garbage truckload every min.


There will be more plastic than fish in our oceans by 2050 according to The Ellen MacArthur Foundation. Knowing all of this we knew we had to innovate to come up with a plastic pollution solution. 


At Spotlight Oral Care, we didn't want to create toothpaste that would contribute to landfill and ocean pollution. After a lot of research, we found a sustainable solution. 


Our toothpaste tubes are produced using Green Polyethylene, a 100% virgin PE derived from Sugarcane and renewable raw material. Sugarcane is one of the greatest carbon sinks that exist, metabolising CO2 as it grows and regenerating itself from its own roots. Grown in Brazil using fair labour, each ton of Green Polyethylene produced captures up to 3.09 tons of CO2, helping to reduce harmful greenhouse gas emissions. Our tubes are fully recyclable and won’t end up contaminating our precious oceans. 


Recycling our tubes is really easy, too. 

Step 1: Squeeze out as much of the remaining toothpaste as possible. 

Step 2: Cut the neck off the top of the tube, and carefully cut a slit along the side. 

Step 3: Rinse out any remaining toothpaste with warm water and soap, and it’s ready to recycle with your household plastics.


So, next time you choose a toothpaste, look for our earth-kind tubes. Together, we can stop plastic pollution, one smile at a time.

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