HDPE toothpaste tubes face a recyclability lawsuit test

Quick answer: Since 2019, Colgate-Palmolive, Unilever and Procter & Gamble have all moved their toothpaste tubes from aluminium-foil laminate to mono-material HDPE, earning recognition from APR in the US and RecyClass in Europe. A federal class action against Colgate-Palmolive, now set for an April 2028 jury trial, argues that printing “recyclable” on a tube is misleading when most municipal programmes still won’t take it. For packaging and legal teams, the case is a live example of why technical recyclability and a defensible on-pack claim are two separate jobs.

Why the old tube was a recycler’s nightmare

Conventional toothpaste tubes are built to protect flavour and fluoride, not to be sorted at a materials recovery facility. The standard construction, known in the industry as an aluminium barrier laminate (ABL), is generally composed of multi-layers of polyethylene, copolymer, aluminum foil barrier, copolymer, and polyethylene. Patent filings describing commercial ABL structures put the aluminium foil core at roughly 10 to 15 micrometres, sandwiched between polyethylene layers, with a laminated material having a total thickness of about 230 microns.

A second family, the plastic barrier laminate (PBL), drops the foil and uses an EVOH layer instead: PBL is a laminate which is aluminium free, made completely of plastics, consisting of multiple PE layers in which an EVOH barrier is incorporated to protect the contents. These EVOH-barrier laminate tubes are thicker than ABL in some patent examples, with disclosed ranges of total thicknesses in the range of 300-460 microns. Neither construction sorts cleanly as a bottle: traditional laminated tubes (ABL/PBL) are typically not recyclable through standard programs, because mixed polymers and foil contaminate the HDPE bale that reclaimers buy.

How the mono-material switch actually works

Colgate-Palmolive spent years trying to replace that laminate with a single polymer. The company’s engineers found that standard HDPE grades were too stiff to squeeze, so they built the tube from several different HDPE formulations layered together. The company’s packaging engineers recognized that they could use more than one grade of HDPE in their designs, and tested a dozen different combinations, using from six to 20 layers, to find the recipe that allows people to comfortably squeeze out all the toothpaste. The resulting tube, internally called “Samson” in RecyClass test documents, used a pigmented, low-melt-flow HDPE.

Colgate has described the result as a first-of-its-kind recyclable tube made primarily of #2 HDPE plastic, the same widely recycled plastic used in soap and detergent bottles. The Tom’s of Maine brand carried the first commercial version in 2020, with the Colgate brand starting the transition in Europe and North America the same year. Unilever followed with its own HDPE tube for Signal, Pepsodent and Closeup, announcing plans to convert their entire global toothpaste portfolio to recyclable tubes by 2025, and reporting that the new material would be the thinnest plastic material available on the toothpaste market at 220-microns. Procter & Gamble took a third route, licensing Albéa’s technology: the new recyclable, HDPE packaging solution will be used for three toothpaste brands, Crest, Oral-B and Blend-a-med, in North America and Europe, rolling out from January 2021 and continuing until full conversion by 2025.

The scale is worth noting. Toothpaste alone accounts for an estimated 20 billion tubes annually around the world, and by 2020 Colgate-Palmolive owned more than a third of the global market with their tubes, according to Bloomberg and Euromonitor. A single design decision at that scale moves a lot of plastic through, or around, the recycling system.

What “recyclable” actually requires under RecyClass

Getting a tube recognised isn’t just a material swap. RecyClass, which sets European design-for-recycling guidance, starts from a simple preference: maximising the proportion of the main polymer, with mono-materials the favoured solution, since a combination of various plastics can complicate sorting and recycling with a negative impact on overall recyclability. For toothpaste tubes specifically, RecyClass testing of Unilever’s PARKES tube found that the concentration of EVOH in the barrier is below 5% of the total weight of the packaging and incorporates more than 3% of polyethylene tie layers grafted with at least 0.1% maleic anhydride. On Colgate’s own tube, the committee’s conditions required that the tube’s body and its shoulder be made of clear or white PE with HDPE prevalence, while the EVOH must be in line with RecyClass’ guidelines, and separately that any other components like closures, liners, seals and valves must be made of polyethylene.

That last point exposes the weak link. Even on tubes that pass every HDPE-body test, RecyClass has been explicit that its approval often does not apply to the toothpaste tube cap, which was not in the scope of the test, and a review of the current polypropylene closure is strongly recommended, as it is known to influence the recyclability of HDPE. Most tubes on shelf today still ship with a PP cap: the cap is made of PP (Polypropylene) #5 plastic, and Colgate has said it is continuing its research to convert all of its caps into a material more compatible with the HDPE stream. Reclaimers generally want that cap reattached rather than loose, because toothpaste caps are typically made from #5 polypropylene, and while recyclable, the small size of the cap means it often falls through the sorting machinery. For readers who want to model how a layer swap like this changes barrier and weight, the laminate estimator gives an indicative stack calculation; the unit converter is useful for moving between micron and gsm figures quoted by different suppliers.

Comparing the tube formats

Format	Typical construction	Typical total thickness (µm)	Recycling status
Aluminium barrier laminate (ABL)	PE / aluminium foil (~10-15 µm) / PE, with tie and EVOH layers in some designs	~230	Not accepted in HDPE or PE bottle streams
Plastic barrier laminate (PBL)	Multiple PE layers with an EVOH gas barrier, no foil	~300-460	Aluminium-free, but still not reliably sorted as a bottle unless EVOH share is controlled
Mono-material HDPE tube	Multiple HDPE grades/layers, EVOH capped near 5% of total weight	~220	APR (US) and RecyClass (EU) recognition for the body; cap usually still PP
Aluminium tube (100% metal)	Collapsible pure aluminium, no laminate	n/a	Fully recyclable, premium look, but niche in mass-market toothpaste

The claim is now in front of a jury

Technical recognition from APR and RecyClass is not the same as a tube actually being recycled by a given household. That gap is the entire basis of a federal class action filed against Colgate-Palmolive in 2023. According to Packaging Dive‘s reporting, a federal judge has set a trial date for April 10, 2028, in an ongoing class-action lawsuit against Colgate-Palmolive that alleges the company displayed “misleading” recyclability statements on certain toothpaste tubes, with the jury trial expected to last approximately 10 days. The case covers packaging that carried phrases such as “recyclable tube,” “first of its kind recyclable tube” and/or the chasing arrows recycling symbol.

The court has already certified a class: all people who purchased a Colgate or Tom’s of Maine brand toothpaste product that displayed “recyclable tube” language on the outer package in the state of California from Aug. 29, 2019, until the lawsuit was filed in 2023. Colgate-Palmolive tried to narrow that class on appeal; the judge in July denied Colgate-Palmolive’s request to appeal the class, after the request had temporarily paused progress on the case. In its own filings the company has acknowledged the scale of the rollout gap, saying it had transitioned approximately 200 toothpaste SKUs to the new packaging by the time the plaintiffs brought the lawsuit, meaning older multilayer tubes and new HDPE tubes were on shelf side by side.

An earlier ruling in the same case set the legal standard that matters for anyone writing claims text. A California judge found that the plaintiffs “adequately alleged that Colgate’s recyclable claims are misleading under the standards set forth in the Green Guides,” the US Federal Trade Commission’s framework for environmental marketing, and separately that the recyclability claims could potentially be legally misleading even with Colgate’s on-packaging disclaimers. In other words, a technically correct “this tube is made of HDPE #2” statement did not automatically clear the bar once local collection access entered the argument. Attorneys for the plaintiffs are now pushing further into that access question: court filings show they intend to subpoena MRFs and waste management companies operating in California, including WM and Republic Services, for additional information on what actually happens to the tubes once they reach a sorting line.

What this means for you

R&D and packaging engineering: a mono-material squeeze tube is a multi-grade HDPE engineering problem, not a resin swap. Colgate’s own path involved testing six to 20 layer combinations before it found a formulation that squeezed and sealed at speed; budget the development time accordingly.
Barrier design: if you need EVOH or another oxygen barrier to protect flavour or actives, keep it below the roughly 5% of total package weight that RecyClass has used as its threshold for HDPE compatibility, and check current guidance directly, since protocols are updated.
Closures: a PE body with a PP cap is still a mixed-material pack in most recyclers’ eyes. If you’re claiming recyclability on-pack, either move the cap to PE or make clear in the claim that the cap is excluded.
Claims and legal: technical recognition from APR or RecyClass covers whether a material can be recycled, not whether your specific market’s collection infrastructure will actually accept it. The Colgate case turns on exactly that distinction. Check the current FTC Green Guides text and your local labelling rules, and treat “recyclable” as a claim that needs market-by-market evidence, not a global one-line statement. For EU-specific labelling and recycled-content obligations, check the current text at ppwreu.org.
Procurement: ask tube suppliers for their specific APR or RecyClass recognition letter and read the conditions attached to it (body colour, EVOH share, cap material). A recognition that excludes the cap is not the same as a recognition for the finished, capped pack on shelf.