Writing Crest Toothpaste about the materials they use to make their tubes.

I was about to throw out a used up tube of Crest toothpaste when the crest.com website caught my eye. I decided to write them about their packaging:

https://crest.com/en-us/contact-us

Dear Crest,

Every time we finish up a tube of toothpaste, I feel rotten throwing the tube in the trash. Do we really need to pollute the earth just to brush our teeth or leave non-biodegradable garbage for future generations to wad through.

Could Crest put its toothpaste tubes out of post-consumer waste? If not, why not? And could you please make your packaging recyclable? It’s because I care about the earth we live on and I don’t want to contribute to crapping it up for my grandchildren.

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Addendum, 4/25/2017

I got a great email response from Crest:

Hi Emily,

Thank you for taking the time to reach out to us here at Crest. I’m sorry to hear you’re disappointed with our package design. I want to assure you I’ll be sharing your feedback with our design and manufacturing teams. I’d also like to provide you with some information on what we do to maintain good environmental practices.

As part of our strategy to grow responsibly, our environmental efforts are guided and inspired by our long-term environmental sustainability vision that includes:

Powering our plants with 100% renewable energy

Using 100% renewable or recycled materials for all products and packaging

Having zero consumer and manufacturing waste go to landfills

Designing products that delight consumers while maximizing our conservation of resources

This vision is stretching and will take decades to achieve. To ensure we are making progress toward this vision, we have set specific, measurable goals within our environmental focus areas of Products and Operations.

I thank you again for getting in touch. Your feedback is very important to us and if there’s anything else I can help you with please don’t hesitate to contact us again.

Curtis
Crest Team

Need to get back in touch? Please do not change the subject line, just hit reply. This makes sure we receive your message.

I took them up on their offer to REPLY back with the following:

Dear Crest Customer Care,

 

Thank you for getting back to me.

 

I read this to mean that they have PLANS to be environmentally responsible, but you are not yet, in reality, making a practice of or implementing these goals.  I also don’t know how much you have achieved these goals and if your stated goals are just lip service to shut people like me up.  It would be great if you would publish their progress on these goals, speak out and inspire other companies to do the same (and giving them “best practice” advice on how they can do it), state ON THE PACKAGING the extent to which it is made from reclaimed materials, and if you would made the tubes recyclable (and, again, labeled them as such).

Thank you.

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