For Consumer Packaged Goods companies and packaging suppliers alike, one of the Holy Grails of sustainable packaging is the quest to reengineer historically non-recyclable materials so that they can be easily recycled. Examples include multilayer flexible films, wax-coated produce shipping cases, and-a biggie for the oral hygiene industry- laminated toothpaste tubes, a particularly tough nut to crack due to the need for an aluminum layer. Toothpaste tubes are traditionally constructed of layers of plastic, with a thin layer of aluminum sandwiched between layers to protect the product from oxygen and humidity. Because of its multilayer structure, and in particular, the aluminum layer, until recently, the tubes could not be recycled. As a result, an estimated 400 million toothpaste tubes are discarded every year in the U.S. and at least 1.5 billion globally. Using another measure to convey the scale of the problem, materials science company Dow shares that unrecyclable toothpaste tubes account for an estimated 100,000 tons of waste each year-"roughly the weight of 10 Eiffel Towers."
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