Swedish design studio Form Us With Love launched its latest venture during Stockholm Design Week earlier this month: FORGO.
The concept is simple: All essential ingredients needed to turn regular tap water into a full bottle of foaming hand wash can be found in a small paper sachet. Add 250ml of hot tap water, et voilà! A clever and sustainable alternative to liquid soap.
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But rethinking the most basic of personal care products, from idea to fruition, is a process that took over two years.
The team worked closely with a perfumer to source fragrances from unlikely sources: Post-industrial waste materials. The Woody fragrance is distilled from timber yard scraps in Canada, and the Citrus fragrance is distilled from the leftover peels and pulp from organic juicing plants in the Caribbean.
The outer packaging is recycled paper and cardboard. When you order refills they come in a paper envelope directly to your door in sets of three. The sachets are made of compostable paper, and the bottles are made of glass.
“We see so many products designed to be wasteful and inefficient. Liquid personal care products are mostly water, an ingredient you probably have at home. So why ship it around in plastic bags and bottles when it’s possible to do better?” says John Lofgren, Creative Director at Form Us With Love.
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Some challenges:
“Unfortunately in the end, we had to make some compromises as most of the actual ingredients that go into the soap are tropical,” said Allon Libermann, design manager at Form Us With Love, and co-founder of Forgo. “But we’re working on creating a non-tropical version.”
“The pumps, which are the only plastic component, unfortunately, come from China. There are no pump manufacturers in America – zero. But we’re working to switch to one in the Netherlands. So it’s a work in progress but it’s better to start with something than to not do anything at all.”
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FORGO is launching this February. For more details visit www.forgo.se.
Photos: FORGO via Form Us With Love
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