Colgate-Palmolive faces lawsuit over ‘misleading’ recyclable toothpaste tube claims
A judge denied the CPG company’s request to throw out a lawsuit that consumers filed a year and a half after Colgate introduced a monomaterial HDPE tube that’s been hotly debated.
A judge on Tuesday denied Colgate-Palmolive’s request to dismiss a lawsuit brought by consumers who say the company’s recyclability claims on certain types of toothpaste packaging is “false, deceptive, misleading and/or unlawful.”
Colgate introduced a “breakthrough” recyclable tube in February 2022, explaining that the monomaterial HDPE tube can be recycled alongside other No. 2 HDPE containers such as milk or detergent jugs. Conventional toothpaste tubes typically are made from multiple different material layers, making them more difficult to recycle than monomaterial products.
Consumers initiated the case against Colgate last August, aiming for a class action suit. At issue are statements on some Colgate and Tom’s of Maine toothpastes that show “recyclable tube,” “first of its kind recyclable tube” and/or the chasing arrows universal recycling symbol.
In his decision on Tuesday that allows the lawsuit to proceed, Judge Joseph Spero of the United States District Court for the Northern District of California rejected multiple of Colgate’s opposition points, deeming certain arguments “unpersuasive.” He concluded that a reasonable consumer might be misled by some of the recyclability messaging and that “Colgate has pointed to no disclaimers that render the statements on its Products concerning recyclability to be non-misleading as a matter of law.” Spero pointed out that deceptive advertising claims are rarely