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When youre brushing your teeth and you’ve squeezed out the last bit of toothpaste, you probably toss the empty tube in the trash. Few people realize that most toothpaste tubes are now recyclableat least in theory. A team at Colgate spent five years redesigning its packaging so that it could easily be recycled, and rolled it out across the brands products in 2022. They also open-sourced the project so other companies could deploy the same approach. Now at least 95% of all toothpaste tubes sold in the U.S. use the design. “We’re proud of the role weve played in transforming plastic tubes into a recyclable format,” says Ann Tracy, chief sustainability officer at Colgate-Palmolive. But recycling companies are still catching up to the news, and most cities still havent told residents that its okay to put the tubes in a recycling bin. Furthermore, a lawsuit currently underway argues that the tubes shouldnt be labeled as “recyclable” since so many cities don’t officially accept them yet. Its a classic challenge for any company working on sustainable packaging: The hardest part isnt necessarily the design but getting recyclers and consumers on board. The innovation Until recently, toothpaste packaging was made with multiple materials, including a layer of aluminum in between plastic. Much like in other types of products, such as sneakers, the mix of materials meant that it wasnt feasible to recycle. More than a decade ago, Colgate started seeking a solution. The old design, with the aluminum, preserved flavor and ingredients like fluoride, and the new tubes needed to perform the same way. They also needed to use a material that was widely accepted for recycling and that could work in the existing manufacturing equipment at packaging plants. Colgates engineering team turned to high-density polyethylene (HDPE), the same material used to make milk jugs. Because basic HDPE wasn’t squeezable enough and wasn’t compatible with the current manufacturing process, they spent years developing a new design with multiple layers of the material. Colgate then shared the design with competitors, realizing that for the tubes to be accepted for recycling, theyd need to become universal. Other major consumer packaged goods companies, like Procter & Gamble, made the switch. Then even completely different products that use the same type of tubeslike some kinds of shampoostarted using the design. There really has been a wholesale movement into recyclable [tubes] in the last couple of years, says Tonya Randell from the sustainability consultancy Stina, which has been working with Colgate on the project. How the tubes can be recycled The tubes are designed to be compatible with commonly used recycling infrastructure. After a garbage truck hauls off your neighborhoods recycling, it ends up at a materials recovery facility (aka MRF, pronounced murph in the industry). A typical urban MRF might deal with hundreds of tons of used packaging each day. Many rely on machines called optical sorters to identify materials: as trash moves down a conveyor belt, a near-infrared light shines on it and can tell if its made from paper or PET (polyethylene terephthalate) or HDPE or something else. Then a puff of air blows each item down a different conveyor belt, depending on the material. Multiple MRFs told me that optical sorters could easily identify the new HDPE tubes. In some cases, consumers are already putting them into recycling bins even when their cities don’t “allow” it. The tubes that make it through MRFs are getting sent to the next step in the recycling process. Some facilities also use AI to help with sorting. Glacier, one fast-growing startup, uses cameras and AI to identify different recyclables by sight. (The company also separately sells a robot that can help sort materials.) The tech can either be used on its own or in combination with optical sorting equipment to help recycle even more materials. In a pilot with Colgate, one MRF in California is using Glacier’s tech to track how many tubes are being recycled. “We want to have better and better data that’s helping us to understand what’s really happening in our system, and how well we’re doing at identifying and then ultimately recovering the materials that are going through our stream,” says Kish Rajan, CEO of Mt. Diablo Resource Recovery. The pilot is still underway, but should yield useful data about actual recycling rates of toothpaste tubes. “With AI like Glacier’s, you suddenly, for the first time, have a real-time item-level understanding of what packaging is actually going where,” says Glacier cofounder Rebecca Hu. “What volume is it coming to the MRF, where is it being sorted? Is it going to the bale? Is it going to landfill? And so that dataset creates a very powerful source of truth.” Some small MRFs that don’t have optical sorting equipment may have more difficulty recycling tubes, though the AI tool could be used as an alternative to sorting by hand. Because the equipment helps recyclers collect more material to sell for recycling, it can pay for itself relatively quickly. Hu says it’s affordable for MRFs of all sizes. It’s not clear how many of the hundreds of MRFs in the U.S. currently have optical sorters. After HDPE plastic is sorted out, it’s baled and shipped off to other recycling companies called reclaimers. They shred it, melt it, and turn it into pellets that can be made into material for something else. Last month, an association of HDPE reclaimers said, for the first time, that tubes were officially acceptable in the bales they buy. “That’s a really critical market validation piece,” says Randell of Stina. It’s also one example of how slowly the system moves: The change came after the tubes had already been on the market for years. The messaging gap Though many MRFs are already sorting and recycling tubes that come into their system, the cities they work with may not be telling residents. Some cities, like New York, still specifically say that tubes should go in the trash. Others post lists of recyclable items that show various types of plastic, but leave out tubes. One recycling company told me that it has little control over what cities say; though the MRF can tell the city what it’s capable of doing, the city ultimately decides whether to communicate that. The company, which works in multiple cities, said that governments tend to err on the side of simplicity and not making frequent changes so that people don’t get confused. But that means some recyclable items get left out. Other cities don’t have the resources to communicate more. “If you know anything about recycling budgets, a lot of midsze and smaller communities just don’t have a lot of money for outreach,” Randell says. “They maybe only print something every couple of years. They maybe only update the website as the webmaster for their county or city has time, not in real time. So even though their MRF may be able to take tubes, for example, and be willing to accept them, that information may not go out to the public for months or years because of the ability to actually leverage education.” Stina is currently focused on direct outreach to both recyclers and communities. “All of those tubes can now be accepted in bales,” Randell says. “So now the next step is, how do you convey that to the public?” What’s recyclable? Right now, consumers who want to recycle toothpaste tubes are in a tricky spot: If your community doesn’t explicitly say the packaging is recyclable, you may have to wait. And critics argue that packaging can’t be called “recyclable” if consumers don’t have easy access to recycling. The U.S. Federal Trade Commission’s Green Guides say that recycling claims can’t be based on theoretical recyclability, but whether the majority of people can recycle a product in the place where it’s being sold. (Colgate’s tubes include recycling instructions, but also say, “Your community may not yet accept tubes for recycling,” and tell people to check locally.) The definition of “recyclable” is obviously complicated by the fact that recyclers may already be recycling the packaging, but community instructions are lagging behind. Other redesigned packaging faces similar challenges. Kraft redesigned ketchup bottles to make the caps recyclable, but caps are still often rejected in recycling programs. Unilever switched to a single material for some deodorant sticks to make the packaging recyclable, but they also may not make it through the system. Seventh Generation switched to a paperboard bottle for laundry detergent, but the complicated designwith a pouch insidemeans that it often isn’t recycled correctly. Then there’s the bigger challenge of low recycling rates: Even when something can easily be recycled anywhere, like a plastic water bottle, it often isn’t. (PET water bottles had a dismal 33% recycling rate in the U.S. in the most recent data.) Some consumers are skeptical about recyclingand make the problem worse by not participating. There’s an unhelpful narrative that recycling doesn’t work at all, even when MRFs are investing in sophisticated equipment and getting valuable materials out. For something like a toothpaste tube, even if a city tells residents it’s recyclable, many may still assume that it isn’t. When communication is a problem, a simple recycling message on the package seems like an obvious part of the solution. But when a company is sued over that labeling, and accused of greenwashing, it’s not clear how that’s really helping advance sustainability at all.
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E-Commerce
Lets be honest: fear is everywhere inside organizations right now. You can feel it in how people talk about headcount or not. You see it in 10-slide decks justifying one decision. You sense it when smart teams stop raising bold ideas and start hedging every word. Ive been in innovation and design for nearly 20 years, working with Fortune 100s through recessions, crises, and COVID-19. Ive never seen fear take up as much space as it does now. Its no wonder why we are here, though. Headlines are dominated by mass layoffs, inflation, AI threats, climate disasters, and geopolitical instability. The pressure to do more with less only seems to grow inside organizations. Where we once saw enthusiastic collaboration and time for ideation, we now hear repeated reminders that this project is critical and the product must launch ahead of schedule. Remember camaraderie, laughter, and the room to innovate? They have all been squeezed out in the name of efficiency. Its not that managers are clueless about the stressors facing their direct reports. Yet pressure from the board, the market, and the team itself creates a vicious cycle of fear that ultimately leads to a scarcity mindset. Time, money, and opportunity suddenly feel limited. As a result, people stop thinking strategically, long-term visions are discarded, and innovation grinds to a halt. And yet, I know this from the dozens of companies Ive worked with in innovation: Teams can still move forward, even amidst great fear. To succeed, they need leaders who can stay grounded, know when to shift gears, and create the conditions for progress despite immense uncertainty. Here are five ways to guide your team out of fear and toward innovation and long-term business growth. 1. Use empathy to shift your culture Leaders set the tone of their teams and how they show empathy for their teams is a huge determinant of teams success. Prioritizing psychological safety and addressing issues transparently can cultivate a thriving and resilient team. I recently led a team through a project with fear at the centera looming launch date, mandated cross-team collaboration (that wasnt always so collaborative), and many reinforced critical reminders. Our team used simple tactics to focus on voices being heard to bring hope. We set up onboarding calls with every team and created a survey to understand what was on their mind and how they were approaching their work. Providing a space for their voices to be heard shifted their thinking from fear to opportunity. Another way you can help teams shift their culture is by creating metrics around empathy. Pulse-check your teams regularly. Build in skip-level 1:1s. Prioritize open communication over perfect communication. In times of turmoil, you cannot over-communicate. Anchoring decision-making in long-term aspirations, not just short-term survival, also helps teams remember that every situation is temporary. Painting a picture of the vision can reshape the entire trajectory of a project. It anchors a team in what feels challenging now but paints a picture of the future that showcases a vision teams can build toward. 2. Build an environment where truth-telling is rewarded Fear loves to shut down expansive thinking. Studies as far back as the 1950s, including Solomon Asch’s conformity experiments and Elisabeth Noelle-Neumann’s spiral of silence theory, illustrate how fear can tamper with expansive thinking and encourage conformity. Yet the last thing we need right now is conformity. Executives need truth-tellers, people who will stand up and say no and give the real talk thats needed. One executive always asked me to visit when I was in town. It wasnt because Id say everything was perfect. Instead, I would tell the truth, ask hard questions, and challenge their opinion if it wasnt rooted in sound insight. This kind of relationship goes beyond fear and centers on mutual respect and trust. As a leader, you dont necessarily need to empower the loudest naysayer in the room, but its time to find and cultivate truth-telling. While debate may seem risky in fearful times, leaders need ideas shared widely, not hoarded. For example, you might require teams to bring three hard questions for every share. If truth-telling feels impossible with current team members, consider expanding the office of the CEO into roles such as a chief of staff, which has seen a nearly 1,934% increase from 2019 to 2022 alone. This role exists to help the CEO uncover whats really happening. There are experts who can evaluate and support the creation of these roles such as Nova Chief of Staff or Ask a COS. 3. Encourage deep failure In tech innovation, youve heard Mark Zuckerbergs Move fast and break things or read The Lean Startup, which coined MVP. Those approaches are right, in theory. However, in corporate America, I rarely see them play out as intended because failure sill feels off-limits. Yet deep failure, done right, can be a golden ticket. Start by running small, agile experiments to gather insights, keeping the end user at the center every step of the way. When failure is reframed as data, not defeat, teams become more creative, and solutions get better and improve faster. The Spotify Model treats failure as fuel by being grounded in autonomy, innovation, and continuous learning. This mindset shift also applies to AI. Too many teams are still blocking generative tools out of fear. Instead, start mandating the use of AI to power rapid experimentation. While enterprise tools like Microsoft Copilot offer a safe starting point, the real value comes from going further. Right-sized, rapid AI tool creation within teams, allows them to customize and solve for their own challenges. 4. Stop glamorizing a good story The best final presentations focus less on telling a good story and more on strategy, substance, and outcomes. Teams shouldnt spend hours editing out words the CEO doesnt like or redesigning an infographic 10 times because it just doesnt feel right. Thats just fear in disguise, and it pulls focus away from what matters: whether the idea is right, not whether its perfectly packaged. One simple fix? Standardize the format. Require every team to deliver their final presentation as a one-page memo. Everyone knows Amazons approach; theyve been onto something for years. When everyone operates from the same format, it levels the playing field and puts the thinking, not the theatrics, at the center. We also must let go of outdated ideas about what a good leader looks or sounds like. Ive been told throughout my career that I have phenomenal executive presence. For a while, I wore that as a badge of honor. I now realize we should call it what it is: a coded way of valuing performance over substance. Its time to stop prioritizing polish and instead focus on outcomes. What matters isnt how someone says it but what theyre actually saying and whether it moves the business forward. 5. Consider your leadership legacy The phrase often attributed to Maya AngelouPeople wont remember what you accomplished, but how you made them feelis usually reserved for personal relationships. But why should it be any different for an executive? A retired Fortune 50 CEO once shared my article on LinkedIn. I reached out to thank her and asked to meet. Ahead of our conversation, I watched her interviews and saw someone who was consistently real, honest, and unafraid to talk about the personal and professional challenges of leadership. When we met, she was even more impressive in person, grounded in her values, and focused on creating an impact far beyond the boardroom. Her approach inspired me to think more intentionally about the legacy I want to leave behind as a leader. Legacy starts with shifting the focus from profit alone to impact. As a leader, you can create large-scale, positive change by championing equity, advancing sustainability or investing in social causes. But figuring out what kind of legacy you want to leave requires reflection. Leadership legacies dont build themselves. As Peter Drucker famously said, What gets measured gets managed. The same applies here. Set goals around the kind of legacy you want to leave, and check in with yourself regularly. Ask: What do I want to be remembered for? and What will people truly take away from working with me? While this metric might feel far away from those set by the board during times of intense pressure, they are just as worthy of time and focus. Perhaps these leadership tips feel basic, but when fear is driving the agenda, the basics are exactly what we need. Leaders need to remember that people power companies and people need their leaders. They need them to model how to lead through turmoil. Fear divides and creates short-term thinking. Yet empathy, truth-telling, encouraging failure, clear strategy, and legacy thinking can unite teams and drive innovation.
Category:
E-Commerce
Want more housing market stories from Lance Lamberts ResiClub in your inbox? Subscribe to the ResiClub newsletter. National home prices rose 0.2% year over year from July 2024 to July 2025, according to the Zillow Home Value Index reading published August 18a decelerated rate from the +2.8% year-over-year rate from July 2023 to July 2024. And more metro-area housing markets are seeing declines: > 31 of the nations 300 largest housing markets (10% of markets) had a falling year-over-year reading from January 2024 to January 2025. > 42 of the nations 300 largest housing markets (14%) had a falling year-over-year reading from February 2024 to February 2025. > 60 of the nations 300 largest housing markets (20%) had a falling year-over-year reading from March 2024 to March 2025. > 80 of the nations 300 largest housing markets (27%) had a falling year-over-year reading from April 2024 to April 2025. > 96 of the nations 300 largest housing markets (32%) had a falling year-over-year reading from May 2024 to May 2025. > 110 of the nations 300 largest housing markets (36%) had a falling year-over-year reading from June 2024 to June 2025. > 105 of the nations 300 largest housing markets (35%) had a falling year-over-year reading from July 2024 to July 2025. All year, more housing markets have slipped into year-over-year price declines as the supply-demand balance gradually tilts toward buyers in todays affordability-constrained, post-boom environment. But this month, that list of declining markets actually got a little shorter. Home prices are still climbing in many regions where active inventory remains well below pre-pandemic 2019 levels, such as pockets of the Northeast and Midwest. In contrast, some pockets in states like Arizona, Texas, Florida, Colorado, and Louisianawhere active inventory exceeds pre-pandemic 2019 levelsare seeing modest home price corrections. Year-over-year home value declines, using the Zillow Home Value Index, are evident in major metros such as Tampa (-6.2%); Austin (-6.0%); Miami (-4.6%); Orlando (-4.3%); Dallas (-3.9%); San Francisco (-3.8%); Phoenix (-3.5%); Jacksonville, Florida (-3.4%); San Antonio (-3.1%); Atlanta (-3.1%); Denver (-2.9%); San Diego (-2.7%); Raleigh, North Carolina (-2.3%); Sacramento (-2.2%); Riverside, California (-2.1%); Houston (-1.9%); San Jose (-1.6%); New Orleans (-1.0%); Charlotte, North Carolina (-0.9%); Los Angeles (-0.8%); Portland, Oregon (-0.8%); Seattle (-0.8%); Memphis (-0.8%); Nashville (-0.2%); and Las Vegas (-0.0%). Click here for an interactive version of the chart below. Many of the housing markets seeing the most softness, where homebuyers have gained the most leverage, are primarily located in Sunbelt regions, particularly the Gulf Coast and Mountain West. Many of these areas saw major price surges during the Pandemic Housing Boom, with home price growth outpacing local income levels. As pandemic-driven domestic migration slowed and mortgage rates rose, markets like Tampa and Austin faced challenges, relying on local income levels to support frothy home prices. This softening trend is further compounded by an abundance of new home supply in the Sunbelt. Builders are often willing to lower prices or offer affordability incentives to maintain sales, which also has a cooling effect on the resale market. Some buyers, who previously would have considered existing homes, are now opting for new homes with more favorable homebuilder deals. !function(){"use strict";window.addEventListener("message",function(a){if(void 0!==a.data["datawrapper-height"]){var e=document.querySelectorAll("iframe");for(var t in a.data["datawrapper-height"])for(var r,i=0;r=e[i];i++)if(r.contentWindow===a.source){var d=a.data["datawrapper-height"][t]+"px";r.style.height=d}}})}(); Given the shift in active housing inventory and months of supply, this softening and regional variation should not surprise ResiClub PRO membersweve been closely documenting it. (ResiClub PRO members can view our latest analysis of home prices across 800-plus metros and more than 3,000 counties here.) Of course, while 105 of the nations 300 largest metro-area housing markets are seeing home price declines, another 195 are still seeing year-over-year home price increases. Where are home prices still up on a year-over-year basis? See the map below: !function(){"use strict";window.addEventListenr("message",function(a){if(void 0!==a.data["datawrapper-height"]){var e=document.querySelectorAll("iframe");for(var t in a.data["datawrapper-height"])for(var r,i=0;r=e[i];i++)if(r.contentWindow===a.source){var d=a.data["datawrapper-height"][t]+"px";r.style.height=d}}})}();
Category:
E-Commerce
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