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Natural toothpaste moves to recycled tube

Burt’s Bees finds it can shift from aluminum to five-layer coextruded tubes with recycled content, topped with caps using recycled resin, too.

Burt’s Bees is fairly buzzing about offering several of its all-natural products in multilayer tubes that use post-consumer recycled (PCR) content and have injection-molded caps that also employ recycled resin.

A growing manufacturer of a variety of natural personal care products, this Durham, NC-based company is committed to being environmentally responsible. In fact, over the years, the company has invested more than $7 million in preserving about 16ꯠ acres of forest land from development in Maine, where the company got its start.

The year-long recycled-content tube project began in early 2003. Two tube suppliers capable of developing a PCR-content tube were identified, says Donna Hollenbach, new products project manager at Burt’s Bees. CCL Plastic Packaging was selected, she says, because it had supplied so many tubes for product compatibility testing, and it was the first company that could do this on a production basis.

Lengthy project

“We had been asking around for this for a couple of years,” Hollenbach says. “We had already been buying some laminated tubes from CCL, and we were referred to the new division that was pioneering the use of post-consumer recycled resin in tubes.”

This project follows Burt’s Bees’ adoption of PCR for products packed in bottles. “For the longest time, we had to pack in either glass bottles or aluminum tubes,” Hollenbach says. “We did use some laminated tubes, primarily for our small sample tubes. Once we found sources of PCR plastic bottles, we were able to shift away from glass, which is not very bathroom friendly.

“It is against our company policy to use virgin plastic containers,” Hollenbach continues. “And now we’re able to shift almost all our tube-packed products from aluminum into the PCR tubes.”

Although Burt’s Bees isn’t the first company to employ PCR in tubes, it is the first in a PCR tube that also uses PCR to make the closure, says Jeffrey Hayet, national accounts manager at CCL Plastic Packaging. “We originally developed the PCR tube for Aveda, a division of Estée Lauder,” Hayet says. “However, Burt’s Bees took it one step farther by using PCR injection-molded caps on their tubes as well. Even though Burt’s Bees is a much smaller company with fewer technical resources, it actually pushed the PCR technology farther along, which is wonderful to see in this business.”

PCR in the middle

Aveda’s tubes use the PCR as the inside layer. Because of its products, Burt’s Bees needs a product-contact layer of virgin polyethylene. The structure of the tube is a coextrusion of PE/tie layer/PCR/tie/virgin PE.

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