Can you recycle toothpaste tubes?
Usually no
Usually not, and this is the most frustrating entry on the site. The industry redesigned the tube to be recyclable, proved it sorts correctly, and gave the technology away. Programs still say landfill. Check yours, then look for a brand mail-in program.
Follow it down the line
Three different questions hide inside "is this recyclable?", and the answer can change at each step.
The material · Sometimes
Is the material recyclable?
The old tube was a laminate in the same awkward family as a chip bag: different plastics and aluminum bonded together, a combination that prevented the tubes being recycled at all. The redesign solved that properly rather than cosmetically. Instead of mixed materials it uses one, high density polyethylene, in different grades and thicknesses laminated together, which keeps the tube squeezable while making it a single-polymer package. The specific construction that first earned recognition was pigmented low-melt-flow HDPE with 5% or less EVOH as a barrier, tie layers and a PET insert. Colgate then did something unusual and shared the technology with competitors, including material covered by its patent applications, and close to 90% of US toothpaste brands committed to recyclable tubes by 2025. So the honest answer at this layer depends on which tube is in your hand, and the odds have shifted a long way toward the good one.
Source: US Plastics Pact: Colgate-Palmolive HDPE toothpaste tube case study
The facility · Sometimes
Will a sorting facility recover it?
This layer is normally where a hopeful package falls down, and the tube is the rare case where somebody did the work first. Recognition from the plastics recyclers' association required two demonstrations rather than an assertion: that the tube navigates the screens and conveyor belts used to sort recyclables, and that the recovered material can actually be reprocessed, which was shown by grinding tubes up and making new bottles from them. The sortation proof was not modeled either. Colgate put RFID tags in tubes and tracked them through facilities to establish that they ended up with the HDPE bottles. And yet the same coverage that reported the achievement named the remaining problem exactly: the company still had to build awareness and support among MRFs, reclaimers and the municipalities that run collection programs. A package can be recognized as recyclable and still not be on anybody's accepted list, because those are two different institutions making two different decisions.
Source: Resource Recycling: brand advances recycling-friendly toothpaste tube
Your curbside program · Rarely
Will your curbside program take it?
The gap between the package and the programs is the whole story here, and it is wide. Napa's entry, updated in August 2025, is four words long: toothpaste tubes go in the landfill cart. Omaha is more detailed and reaches the same place, saying tubes should not go in a curbside recycling cart or drop-off container and belong in the garbage, while offering a genuine alternative: a paid orange bag program run by a local processor that collects hard-to-recycle plastics through the ordinary curbside service. Santa Cruz does not put tubes in the cart either, and instead points residents at two free brand-funded mail-in and drop-off programs that take tubes, caps, toothbrushes and floss containers together. Three programs, three different answers, and none of them is the recycling cart. If your tube says it is recyclable, it is probably telling the truth about itself and not about your collection.
Sources: Napa Recycling: toothpaste tubes, Omaha Recycling Guide: toothpaste tubes, Santa Cruz Recycles: toothpaste tubes
What you need to do
- Squeeze it out properly. A tube with paste left in it is wet contamination whichever route it takes
- Check your own program before assuming either answer. Three cited here give three different instructions
- Keep the cap, which most mail-in programs take along with the tube
- Do not cut the tube open to clean it, which turns one sortable object into scraps
Where else it can go
A free brand mail-in program
This is the route that works today. Oral care collection schemes take tubes, caps, toothbrushes and floss containers together, by drop-off point or post, and Santa Cruz lists two of them by name.
Empty and dry, and worth confirming the program still runs before saving a year of tubes. These are funded by brands rather than by councils.
A hard-to-recycle bag program
Some cities run a paid bag scheme that rides along with normal collection, which is how Omaha handles tubes and other awkward plastics.
You buy the bags, so this is a service you are paying for rather than a route the program funds.
Ask your own program, once
This is the item most likely to have changed since anyone last checked, because the packaging changed underneath the guidance. One search of your program's site settles it.
The label on the tube answers a different question from the one you are asking.
Common mistakes
- Reading a recyclable claim on the tube as a statement about your cart. It is a statement about the package design
- Assuming nothing changed. The tube really was redesigned, tested through facilities and recognized, which is more than most packaging can say
- Assuming everything changed. Programs update their accepted lists on their own schedule, and several still say landfill
- Putting the tube in the cart hopefully, where a non-listed item is contamination rather than a helpful nudge
- Throwing the cap away separately when the mail-in programs want it with the tube