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.
You can see the same premise at work with laundry detergent that comes in solid form, which is what inspired de Bruijn to research what other liquid household products could be distilled similarly. The chemical concentrates are the conceptual element of the project, but de Bruijn designed a brand and packaging based on the idea. All of her packaging is made of materials that can be recycled, like cardboard, as well as reusable plastic bottles.