Welcome
Now Reading 1 of 6
Action Learning
Something to smile about: improving the sustainability profile of Colgate’s toothpaste packaging
As part of their 2025 Sustainability and Social Impact Strategy, Colgate is working towards its goal for 100% of its packaging to be recyclable, reusable, or compostable by 2025. As such, Colgate worked with a team of S-Lab students on a project for their French business to develop innovative ways for Colgate to transition to reusable and refillable toothpaste packaging.
Learn MoreIn Sustainable Business Lab (S-Lab), students explore the intersection of business, the environment, and society, using new knowledge to solve real-world problems.
15.878 Sustainable Business Lab (S-Lab)
How can we translate sustainability challenges into future business opportunities? How can businesses and society move together toward a more sustainable and just world? Today, organizations of all kinds are tackling these very questions. S-Lab enables students to bring academic rigor to real world problems, taking the lessons learned in the classroom and applying them to projects that are immediately useful to host organizations - all while advancing the field of sustainability as a whole.
At MIT Sloan, sustainability is about more than just the environment. It includes economic development, social equity and responsibility, political and personal choices, and environmental action at all levels. Simply put, sustainability is about people and the future we want for ourselves. Through cases, readings, guest speakers, and Action Learning projects, S-Lab students have the chance to affect real change and empower business leaders to take action to improve outcomes in the long-term.
With the support of the MIT Sloan Sustainability Initiative, teams of masters-level MIT students use a problem-formulation methodology developed by MIT Sloan to help organizations determine what sustainability problem they want to solve and why it's important. One of the special features of S-Lab is the diverse, interdisciplinary nature of the teams, which can include MBAs, MIT Sloan Fellows and MIT graduate students.