Products and packaging undergo continual revision and improvement, with most companies constantly striving to use less material, simplify their manufacturing processes, and make their products more user friendly. An increasing number of organizations are also prioritizing environmental concerns, with plans in place to make their products and product lines recyclable. Since there are many types of recyclable plastics now available, it seems like using them as replacements for non-recyclable materials should be simple. Substituting one material for another, however, is often more complex than it seems.
Changing the material that a product is made out of may require a completely new manufacturing process or lead to the product not performing as expected. In one notable case, it took a toothpaste tube manufacturer five years to find the right design to replace their non-recyclable predecessor. High-density polyethylene (HDPE) is a great choice for a recyclable plastic, but is also rigid enough that using it for a toothpaste tube makes the tube difficult to squeeze. In order to solve this problem, the product designers needed to fully understand the properties of the different grades of HDPE in order to find the right combination that could effectively substitute for the non-recyclable material.