TUBELESS TOOTHPASTE

Design Research / Product Design
2022
On average, one person brushes their teeth around two times a day routinely. However, 1.5 billion toothpaste tubes are discarded worldwide each year, in which 13% of the toothpaste remains in each tube when thrown away. Apart from the waste of product, the amount of plastic pollution that toothpaste tubes produce is deeply harming the environment. As a result, instead of focusing on how to deal with the amount of waste generated, a change in our behaviour to use less hazardous materials is required. 
The tubeless toothpaste is, a bar-shaped toothpaste that does not come in its usual tube container, but in a wooden circular one. The toothpaste is solidified similar to a soap bar, where the user can apply the product on their toothbrush with water by rubbing it on the bar. The modular design of the container allows for a number of them to be stacked up and save space in the household’s bathroom counter. Then, when the bar is finished, a new one can be bought separately, that comes wrapped in biodegradable bioplastic and could be placed again inside one’s wooden container. In this manner, no materials are disposed of, but rather reused, which ultimately reduces the amount of waste that this universal ritual produces. Additionally, the packaging of the soap is made using a Japanese wrapping technique without adhesives, that one could potentially use it to give nutritional value to the soil of their plants by its ability to fully degrade.
in collaboration with Barbara Hernandez, Elina Lehmkuhl
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