“But how can I hope to explain myself here; and yet, in some dim, random way, explain myself I must, else all these chapters might be naught.” — Herman Melville, Moby Dick “Life in plastic, it’s fantastic.” — Aqua, Barbie Girl

I’ve noticed something funny about consumer packaging. We all work together; we pile our resources, finances and innovation into… bad things. Things that are not good for the health of our world or us.

To illustrate my claim, let’s use a specific example–the lip balm tube. Most lip balm tubes (or eggs/sticks/any finger-free lip application device) are mixed plastic. That’s not good. Plastic recycling is a ritual of mass delusion. In 2015, our best year on record, we recycled 9% of plastic once.^[1] Hiyo! those were the glory days, amiright? ✋ Surprise! investigations revealed much of our grand 9% was a lie. We exported it to poor countries for “recycling.”^[2]

Some lip balm tubes are made of cardboard. It seems like a better option. We planned to make the switch. The problem with cardboard is that it’s cardboard; the oils in lip balms make cardboard messy. We did the barest of due diligence–we asked what manufacturers treat the tubes with. The way to make cardboard tubes less messy is to bathe it in perfluoroalkyl/polyfluoroalkyl compounds (PFAS). PFAS is a forever chemical. It’s toxic. It accumulates in us. I don't have the right to choose PFAS–predictable harm–for anyone.

The relationship between PFAS exposure and individual health outcomes is uncertain. Medicine does not have the diagnostic insight to answer what PFAS exposure does to any one person. The human body is complex. What we can say is that populations with higher PFAS exposure have decreased immune response, reduced birth weight, increased circulatory disease and kidney cancer. PFAS likely increases liver and thyroid disease. I do not have a right to bring that into this world. I could choose PFAS for myself. But I wouldn’t. Because it’s a scary world of sickly unknowns! So I don't choose it for you. It is that simple.

Aluminum packaging is better for human-ecological health. I say human-ecological health because what’s bad for the earth is bad for you. That’s just science.

To help us envision better, let's imagine some upstart team created an aluminum lip balm tube. It would be cool if they did. Aluminum is awesome! Aluminum is infinitely recyclable. You can recycle aluminum again and again without losing material quality. Critically, it’s profitable to recycle. People do it, and facilities exist to do it, because people make money recycling aluminum. Profitable recycling is the only reliable recycling. And that’s not just like, ya know, our opinion, man.

An aluminum tube lip balm tube would be challenging. Straight up–aluminum is less functionally versatile than plastic. It would be a material science conundrum to match plastic’s functionality with aluminum. Make no mistake–plastic is functionally amazing. You can create almost anything with it. Plastic’s effect on our bodies and world is a problem.^[3]

If a team managed to create an aluminum lip balm tube it would still have to figure out the rest. Lip balms tubes are filled on large expensive machines by pouring gently heated ingredients. An aluminum tube would have new properties, functions and dimensions. It would not fit existing machines. It would require creating a new machine-filling process. This is costly.

An aluminum tube would require a tamper-evident shrink wrap. The non-plastic offerings are growing. They are becoming more functional. The most promising material, polyhydroxyalkanoates (PHA) safely dissolves into minerals in marine environments.^[4] PHA can be safe for humans and bees. Plastic isn’t.^[5]

Compounding the risk, the tube would be new; no one has seen it. So no buyer at a large chain would commit to it. The cost and sacrifice would be hard on a small team.

An aluminum lip balm tube would be hard even for a multinational corporation with ample money, expertise, partners, connections, and clout. With all that, it would still take vision and grit to innovate. For a small, unknown, under-resourced team without relevant expertise, it would be a fool's errand.

Even if you could manage all of this, you would still be left with the issue that aluminum costs more than plastic or cardboard saturated with PFAS. This cost is why an aluminum tube has value even when it’s empty. It’s an opportunity, not a burden. Even if you could match the scale of plastic lip balm devices–conservatively estimated at 800 million units a year–an aluminum device would still cost more. An aluminum tube has value when it’s empty.

Costs are funny things. If you think they all show up in tidy columns on balance sheets you’re missing the greater thing–the health of me and you.

Scale is where this tale gets interesting. The economics of shared responsibility and opportunity would be best at that. That is to say, a Coalition.

^[1] U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. (2025, October 31). Plastics: Material-specific data. EPA. https://www.epa.gov/facts-and-figures-about-materials-waste-and-recycling/plastics-material-specific-data

^[2] McCormick, E., Murray, B., Fonbuena, C., Kijewski, L., Saraçoğlu, G., Fullerton, J., Gee, A., & Simmonds, C. (2019, June 17). Where does your plastic go? Global investigation reveals America’s dirty secret. The Guardian. https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2019/jun/17/recycled-plastic-america-global-crisis

^[3] Persson, L., Carney Almroth, B. M., Collins, C. D., Cornell, S., de Wit, C. A., Diamond, M. L., Fantke, P., Hassellöv, M., MacLeod, M., Ryberg, M. W., Søgaard Jørgensen, P., Villarrubia-Gómez, P., Wang, Z., & Hauschild, M. Z. (2022). Outside the safe operating space of the planetary boundary for novel entities. Environmental Science & Technology, 56(3), 1510–1521. https://doi.org/10.1021/acs.est.1c04158

^[4] Suzuki, M., Tachibana, Y., & Kasuya, K. (2020). Biodegradability of poly(3-hydroxyalkanoate) and poly(ε-caprolactone) via biological carbon cycles in marine environments. Polymer Journal, 53(1), 47–66. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41428-020-00396-5

^[5] Pasquini, E., Ferrante, F., Passaponti, L., Pavone, F. S., Costantini, I., & Baracchi, D. (2024). Microplastics reach the brain and interfere with honey bee cognition. Science of the Total Environment, 912, 169362. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.scitotenv.2023.169362