Colgate-Palmolive is probably best known for making Colgate toothpaste, but it’s also a global company that makes products from skincare to dog food, and from cleaning products like Ajax, to toothpaste brands like Tom’s of Maine.
We’ve summarised the key ethical issues to consider when it comes to Colgate-Palmolive.
Since 1989 we've been researching and recording the social and environmental records of companies, and making the results available to you in a simple format.
Learn more about our company profiles →Our research highlights several ethical issues with Colgate-Palmolive and its many brands, which include Ajax, Colgate, Hill’s Pet Nutrition, Palmolive, Sanex, Tom’s of Maine alongside many more. It scored particularly badly for its approach to animal testing, tax conduct, climate, palm oil and company ethos.
Below we outline some of these issues. To see the full detailed stories, and Colgate-Palmolive's overall ethical rating, please sign in or subscribe.
On the surface, Colgate-Palmolive’s sustainability messaging is polished. It has published extensive reporting on its direct carbon emissions and has announced long-term carbon reduction plans, approved by the Science Based Targets Institute (SBTi).
But critics have questioned its strategy for reducing Scope 3 emissions, which represent the vast majority of its impact. These are the indirect greenhouse gas emissions that occur in a company’s supply chain before the company's own operations begin. According to Planet Tracker, the company is expected to exceed its emissions target by 7 times by 2030. There are also tensions between its corporate sustainability messaging and the trade bodies that Colgate-Palmolive participates in, with critics suggesting that industry lobbying can undermine climate progress.
Colgate-Palmolive declared a voluntary moratorium on animal testing in 1999, which covered all of its personal care products and ingredients used in those products. However, its policy also states that animal testing can be conducted “where required by regulatory agencies or where alternative testing methods are unavailable to ensure the safety of our products”. It therefore scored very poorly in our animals rating.
Environmental campaigners have scrutinised Colgate-Palmolive's use of palm-derived ingredients, a sector long linked to deforestation, human rights abuses and biodiversity loss.
Although the firm reports using a high proportion of certified palm oil, its lack of response to environmental and human rights allegations against one of its suppliers has been noted.
Colgate-Palmolive has several subsidiaries in tax havens. Many of these are high risk company types when it comes to tax avoidance, for example holding companies and investment banking companies in the British Virgin Islands and Switzerland respectively. It therefore scores poorly in our Tax Conduct rating (subscribe to see the full score).
There are currently no official active boycotts against Colgate-Palmolive related to Israel-Palestine. The company does have an active presence in Israel, but we found no evidence of active involvement with the Israeli state or with institutions complicit in the genocide of Palestinians.
Colgate-Palmolive was marked down for excessive pay to its directors, with one receiving $18.2 million (£13.3 million) in 2024.
Colgate-Palmolive recently agreed to a $2.9 million class action settlement claiming that it misled consumers about the safety and quality of Tom’s of Maine products – one of its subsidiaries. According to the lawsuit, Tom’s of Maine failed to meet the FDA’s “Current Good Manufacturing Processes”, but Colgate-Palmolive allegedly continued to market Tom’s of Maine toothpaste as “naturally sourced” and “naturally effective.”
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The text above was researched and written in spring-summer 2026.
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