We’re overrun with plastic. It’s in our oceans, our water, our food. Something has to be done—preferably by corporations, which churn out millions of tons of plastic every year.

Enter: the toothpaste tube. It might seem like a minor player in the plastic problem, but we throw 20 billion toothpaste tubes into the landfill every year. Recycling plants can’t take them, because they’re made of plastic and metal foil bonded together. They all end up in the landfill.

Colgate, the #1 toothpaste brand, decided to tackle the problem. It spent five years and millions of dollars to design a tube made of the same plastic milk jugs are made of—the easiest-to-recycle plastic in the world—with no metal foil. The new tube is indistinguishable from existing tubes—except the whole thing can go into the recycle bin.

And then—Colgate gave away the patent. Today, 90% of the world’s toothpaste makers are switching to recyclable toothpaste tubes. This is the uplifting, surprising, and slightly hilarious story.

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The Million-Dollar Toothpaste Tube