A Dutch design student proposes a common-sense alternative to the way most home goods are sold today. Look at any label on a household product, from laundry detergent to dish soap to shampoo, and you’ll see that most are 80% water. Across billions of units, shipped around the world, that adds up to a huge amount of extra weight–which means more packaging wasted, more fuel needed, and more pollution produced. What if each product was distilled down to its non-water ingredients and sold as a solid? That’s the idea behind the designer Mirjam de Bruijn ‘s project Twenty , a concept for packaging where these products are sold in solid form. Once you’ve bought your shampoo pellets, you simply put them in a reusable bottle, and add water. [Photo: Mirjam Lois de Bruijn ] If the concept, which is de Bruijn’s thesis for the Design Academy Eindhoven, were to be widely adopted, she estimates the average plastic packaging per person in the Netherlands would reduce significantly.
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