来源：《经济学人》
刊登日期：2021年5月20日
For a toothpaste tube, no matter how you squeeze and twist it out of shape, it's a vain attempt to extract its remaining contents. But not, perhaps, for much longer. Colgate-Palmolive, an American consumer-goods giant, has taken up an invention by a pair of experts in super-slippery surfaces to produce toothpaste tubes that promise to deliver every last scrap of their contents.
一个牙膏管，无论你怎么挤，怎么拧，想要挤干净它里面剩下的东西都是徒劳的。但这种情况也许不会持续太久。美国消费品巨头高露洁-棕榄公司利用两位研究超光滑表面专家的发明，生产出了一种牙膏管，这种牙膏管承诺能排出牙膏内的所有残余物。
In 2012 Kripa Varanasi, a professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and Dave Smith, his PhD student, set up a company called LiquiGlide to commercialise their work on making liquids flow more easily through pipes and out of containers. What caught many people’s imaginations at the time was a demonstration of how this could be used to empty a ketchup bottle without shaking it vigorously.
2012年，麻省理工学院教授克里帕·瓦拉纳西和他的博士生戴夫·史密斯成立了一家名为LiquiGlide的公司，将他们的研究成果商业化，使液体更容易通过管道和流出容器。当时引起很多人想象力的是一个演示，如何用这一技术，无需用力摇晃，就能排空番茄酱瓶子。
So far, ketchup-makers have not embraced the idea. But the health and beauty industry, where products tend to be pricier than ketchup, is interested. Mibelle Group, a Swiss producer of health-care and beauty products, employs the technology to lessen the amount of material left stuck to the insides of pipes and vessels in its factories when it is time for a clean-up. LiquiGlide’s deal with Colgate is, though, the firm’s first big break into a consumer business.
到目前为止，番茄酱制造商还没有接受这个想法。但医疗和美容行业对此很感兴趣，因为这些行业的产品往往比番茄酱贵。瑞士医疗和美容产品生产商Mibelle集团采用这种技术，在工厂进行清理时，减少残留在管道和容器内部的物质。然而，LiquiGlide与高露洁的交易是该公司在消费者业务上的第一次重大突破。
The new toothpaste, called Elixir, comes in three varieties: a formula for whitening teeth, one for gum care and a “detox” version which, it is claimed, removes impurities from the mouth. All are packaged in plastic tubes that can be emptied with ease. Elixir has gone on sale in Europe, though no decision has yet been made about whether it will be sold elsewhere.
这种名为Elixir的新牙膏有三个品种：一种是牙齿美白配方，一种是牙龈护理配方，还有一种据称可以清除口腔杂质的“排毒”配方。所有三种都用塑料管做包装，可以很容易地清空。Elixir已经在欧洲上市，不过是否会在其他地方销售还没有决定。
Besides pleasing customers who like to get their money’s worth, the new, slippery toothpaste tubes should help with recycling. Existing tubes are rarely recycled, not only because they have residue left inside them but also because they are usually made from plastic and aluminium. Mixed materials of this sort are hard to recycle, and therefore end up being dumped in landfill, or burnt.
除了取悦那些想要物有所值的顾客，新的光滑的牙膏管应该有助于回收利用。现有的牙膏管很少被回收利用，这不仅是因为里面有残留物，而且因为它们通常是由塑料和铝制成的。这种混合的材料很难回收利用，因此最终会被扔进垃圾填埋场或焚烧。