By Betsy Vereckey
18 September 2024
Region
New York, New York
Education
Lehigh University
“I love teaching and discovery, and I love the pace of sustainability changing every day.”
The world goes through a lot of toothpaste a year—around 20 billion tubes a year, Ann Tracy TEE’02 estimates. And given that Colgate-Palmolive makes about half of those plastic tubes, “we’re always looking to find ways to help eliminate plastic waste—including making tubes recyclable,” says Tracy, the company’s chief sustainability officer.
Colgate embarked on this mission around a decade ago, which was no small feat. First, the company had to make the tube using high-density polyethylene—a type of plastic that is widely recyclable—and redesign the tube so that it didn’t contain aluminum (used to protect the fluoride in the toothpaste but prevented it from being recyclable). Then, because the packaging had changed, Colgate had to convert manufacturing equipment in its factories. And finally, the company decided to share this technology to inspire other manufacturers to convert toothpaste tubes to HDPE plastic tubes. Colgate is thrilled by the progress that has been made, with the four largest toothpaste tube manufacturers having announced a goal to move to recyclable tubes by 2025. (Consumers should check with their local programs about whether tubes are accepted for recycling in their communities.)
“The need for rigorous focus is just absolutely paramount in sustainability,” Tracy says. “In this space, we’ve found that it’s better to choose big things where we can really make an impact and really lean in on that with our resources, time, and money as opposed to trying to do a little bit of everything.”
Staying “laser focused” is an attribute that Tracy took away from Tuck’s Global Leadership Program. “I still remember Vijay Govindarajan’s three-box model, which is about taking complex problems and breaking them down into simple things, something I still try to do every day,” she says.
Colgate was one of the first companies to participate in Tuck Executive Education’s Global Leadership Program, and to this day, still sends top-performing leaders to the program. Tracy recalls of her experience, “It really stretches you. It was one of the milestone leadership development programs of my career.”
Tracy is a graduate of Lehigh University, where she earned a bachelor’s and master’s in engineering. She began working at Colgate over three decades ago after deciding to enter FMCG (fast moving consumer goods) because she “loved the pace” and “being able to go to the store and see what you made on the shelf.” She worked in many roles across Colgate’s end-to-end supply chain, from the manufacturing side to customer service and logistics. Throughout her career, she’s lived in Asia, the UK, and Switzerland and was thrilled when her supply chain experience helped her segue into sustainability.
“Our sustainability and social impact program that helps advance our purpose really started in our global supply chain,” she says. “You could say that’s where most of our work was anchored. We’ve been striving for sustainability for 20 years, whether measuring either a reduction in emissions or the amount of water used in our production. It was a natural evolution for someone in our supply chain like me to take on leadership of sustainability.”
Tracy is also a board member for Global Compact Network USA, which is the U.S. Chapter of the United Nations Global Compact, the largest corporate sustainability initiative in the world. In the future, Tracy would like to use her time to serve on public boards.
“I love teaching and discovery, and I love the pace of sustainability changing every day,” she says. “The environment we are operating in is rapidly evolving, including with emerging regulations, but that makes it an exciting and challenging time to be in this space and provides a continuous path for learning.”
This story appeared in print in the summer 2024 issue of Tuck Today magazine.
