The tiny strip
What a mouthwash sachet taught me about packaging design
I bought Colgate mouthwash sachets for a recent trip, and some were left over when I got back. They sat on my countertop for a while, so one day I started emptying them into my regular mouthwash bottle, one after another.
Doing the same small thing over and over is a good way to notice things. The sachet has a scored tear line on the side, so you can open it without scissors, and I liked that.
But every time, the easy part ended too early. The scored line got me started, and then I had to keep tearing all the way across until a small strip of plastic came off completely. I was left holding two things: the sachet and a tiny strip of film.
That strip is what this post is about.
What was actually happening
The strip comes off because the tear line sits over a sealed edge. Under the scored line, film is sealed together, so the pack stays shut until the whole strip is gone.
To compare, I opened a sachet that has just a plain notch on the side. It had nothing sealed below the notch, tearing it halfway is enough to open it and use what’s inside. The strip stays attached.
Why a loose strip matters
Small pieces are the first thing recycling systems lose. The Association of Plastic Recyclers notes that items under two inches in two dimensions are likely to fall through the screens at sorting facilities and drop out of the process. A council guide in Australia lists single-serve sauce packets as too small to recycle on their own.
The EU has already made this argument for bottle caps. Under a 2019 directive, caps on single-use beverage containers up to three litres have to stay attached to the container while it’s in use, and member states were required to put the rule in place by July 2024. The reasoning, as packaging makers describe it, is that a separate cap often ends up in the environment as its own piece of waste, while an attached one travels with the bottle.
A tear strip is the same problem on a smaller scale.
What this won’t fix
I want to be honest here, because this is easy to oversell. A sachet like this is a multilayer pack: plastic combined with other layers such as paper, metallised film or foil, which is how India’s plastic waste rules define it. A recent report from the Centre for Science and Environment found multilayer plastic to be the most expensive and difficult category of plastic packaging to manage in India. An older analysis from Chintan found essentially no takers for this waste, and the routes it does take, like incineration, sit near the bottom of the recovery ladder.
Keeping the strip attached changes none of that. The sachet still isn’t getting recycled.
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What it changes is smaller and more realistic: the strip travels with the sachet it came from. In my view, a loose strip is light, easy to get unnoticed and difficult to collect, while an attached one gets thrown away along with the sachet.
The idea
Put the tear where there’s no seal underneath it. A simple notch on the side is enough, in my view. The pack then opens as soon as the tear breaks through, so you can open it halfway, use it, and the strip stays attached. People who prefer to tear it all the way off still can. The point isn’t to stop them, only to give them a choice which today’s design doesn’t.
There’s a second part to my idea, and it’s purely a hunch. Right after the notch, print a line that runs about halfway across the pack. A line that stops halfway might make people stop tearing halfway, because the line seems to tell them that’s where the tear ends. Most people wouldn’t think about it. They’d just follow the line. I haven’t tested this, and I don’t know how many people it would work on, but it costs almost nothing to try.
None of the pieces are new. Laser scoring, which guides a tear along a line cut into the outer layer of the film, already exists and, according to the manufacturer Uflex, doesn’t compromise the pack’s barrier. An old US closure patent describes keeping a tear strip attached to the container so it doesn’t become separate litter. What I’m suggesting is that the same thinking could reach a mouthwash sachet.
One caveat: this comes from opening and comparing sachets, not from a prototype or a factory trial. Treat it as a suggestion from someone who uses the product, not a tested solution.
Next time you open a sachet, notice whether you end up holding one piece or two.
Sources
• Association of Plastic Recyclers: size sorting in the plastics recycling process
• Glen Eira City Council: small items under 5 cm
• Plastic Waste (Management and Handling) Rules, 2011
• Food Packaging Forum: report on plastic waste management costs and EPR payments
• Chintan: multilayered packaging
