Sarah Ryan Hudson found the Barbie’s Dr. Jane Goodall packaging to be a welcome departure from the hard-to-open versions of her youth. The costs involved in overhauling packaging systems also made them reluctant to change for the benefit of a less-finicky opening experience. To be sure, shifts toward more sustainable materials haven’t made packaging easier to use across the board, and campaigners for widely accessible packaging say companies aren’t moving to provide it quickly enough. The company’s Gillette razor brand in 2021 began selling some razors in cardboard packaging with a pulp tray, rather than in plastic blister packs and trays. Colgate-Palmolive Co. in 2019 introduced a recyclable Colgate toothpaste tube, using a high-density polyethylene material without aluminum, said Greg Corra, Colgate-Palmolive’s worldwide director of global packaging and sustainability.

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