Brand owners’ ongoing push for more sustainable packaging is driving packagers and suppliers to take a fresh look at materials and how to use them.

Material-forward strategies for boosting sustainability include eliminating overwraps and other packaging components, replacing multi-material packaging with mono-material, and eliminating hard-to-recycle materials in favor of easily recycled ones.

These innovations are occurring in a range of consumer goods categories, including healthcare and food and beverage.

In the personal-care category, a package redesign for Colgate-Palmolive’s Colgate Keep toothbrush takes plastic out of the picture completely. Ditching the plastic blister that was part of the previous package design has enabled consumers to recycle the new pack in a single waste stream and keeps hard-to-recycle blisters out of landfills and the environment.

Colgate Keep’s new 100% paper package, which incorporates 60% recycled content, is a molded-pulp tray made from biodegradable sugar cane and wood pulp. Thanks to a clever structural design, no inserts are required to hold the product in place.

The Colgate Keep toothbrush package was one of five Sustainable Packaging award winners in the 2022 Institute of Packaging Professionals (IoPP) AmeriStar competition.

Start our slideshow to see additional sustainability winners from the AmeriStar competition and from the Packaging Europe 2022 Sustainability Awards.