Toothpaste tubes count among the worst-designed packaging on the shelf today. Even those of you who are meticulous about squeezing from the bottom wind up wasting toothpaste simply because it’s too hard to extract the last few drops that gather near the top edges. With all that Aquafresh we’ve thrown out over the years, we could’ve fixed the dental hygiene of the entire nation of England.

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Designers Sang Min Yu and Wong Sang Lee have come up with a simple solution: a zippable cap that eliminates that vexing deadzone of a typical tube. Made out of Tetra Pak -- the same stuff used for milk cartons -- and resembling something between a push pop and a Ziploc bag, SavePaste works by letting you slide open the tube, then extract toothpaste from a single corner. The packaging is collapsible, like a milk carton. So when your tube is nearly tapped, you just flatten it and blammo: the last dollops of toothpaste emerge.

An added benefit, the designers say: SavePaste reduces both material waste and shipping costs. That’s because it’s a third the size of your average toothpaste packaging, which, as we all know, comes as a tube inside of a box. With SavePaste, the tube is the box.



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The bad news: SavePaste is just a concept. Here’s hoping the Crests and Colgates of the world adopt it like yesterday.

[Images courtesy of Sang Min Yu; hat tip to Yanko]"