Want to create an interactive transcript for this episode?
Podcast: Unsung Science
Episode: The Million-Dollar Toothpaste Tube
Description:
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 millio...