A Retraction

I was confused! Don't start sending old toothpaste tubes to Tom's of Maine!


I don't know where I got the idea that Rick was mailing his empty tubes to the East Coast. I might have gotten them mixed up with Preserve brand toothbrushes, which come from the store in a pre-addressed package that you use to mail the old toothbrush to the company for recycling when you're done with it. Rick just takes the old Tom's tubes to our local recycle center. He chooses Tom's because the tubes are metal rather than plastic. This is what the Tom's of Maine website says about its toothpaste tubes:


Tubes: Recyclable aluminum
Cap: Polypropylene #5
Threading: LDPE #4
Box: Recycled/Recyclable paperboard -- 40-65% post consumer
Insert: Recycled/Recyclable paper -- 100% post consumer

Tom's contributes to all sorts of good causes, manufactures and packages its products as responsibly as it can, and treats its employees well. So it's a good toothpaste choice for a variety of reasons. We have some concerns about aluminum, which we've eliminated from our kitchen because of research linking it to Alzheimer's. But this is what we're doing at the moment -- at least for one toothpaste tube's worth of time.