Why We Use Plastic Tubes Instead of Paper

People often ask us if we've thought about using eco-friendly packaging and the answer, of course, is yes!

On the shipping front, we use recycled padded paper mailers. There's as much plastic in a bubble mailer as there is in all the lip balm tubes in most orders we ship off. We use paper shred and starch peanuts in wholesale orders, and we try our best to use the most precise sized box so that we don't really need a lot of those either.

But the lip balm tubes are another story.

I've always loved the idea of paper tubes, but they aren't as durable as the plastic ones. The lip balm leaves stains on the cardboard if there are any splashes or drips which leads to more packaging being wasted in manufacturing, but the biggest hurdle for us has been the price and availability to us here in Canada.

Paperboard tubes cost over five times more than plastic tubes. And as much as I know a few people will say they don't mind paying more, I know that we lose a lot of customers who simply can't afford to pay what we would need to charge to stay in business.

So that's the scoop on our eco-packaging!