Perhaps the most timely new product release around, I am delighted to have discovered Swedish design studio Form Us With Love‘s newest venture, FORGO.
More than two years in the making, Forgo is a sustainable personal care product designed to reconfigure the most significant product of recent times; the humble hand wash. The idea itself is pure genius in its simplicity; one small paper sachet containing all the essential ingredients needed to turn regular tap water into a full bottle of foaming hand wash, in under a minute!
Launched during Stockholm Design Week in February, the idea for Forgo was seeded by FUWL design team member, Allon Libermann, and incubated at the studio together with entrepreneurs and a lab specialised in natural cosmetics. The resulting product appears to offer a genuinely sustainable alternative to liquid soap. One sachet, which contains approx. twelve grams of powder, is all it takes to make a full 250ml bottle of foaming hand wash using hot tap water. This mix-it-yourself hand wash effectively minimises carbon emissions, and avoids plastic packaging – clever, huh?
Forgo’s ambition is to be the sustainable subscription base for all your daily personal care, starting with hand wash. When you first purchase the product you receive a simple glass bottle, with pump-action cap, plus three sachets of powder. All subsequent purchases just come as refill sachets, which are sent in mailbox-friendly paper envelope directly through your door in handy sets of three.
“We see so many products designed to be wasteful and inefficient,” says John Lofgren, Creative Director at Form Us With Love. “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?” Well yes, indeed.
We have defined our mission as Design Real Change, our guide to influence everything we do here at Form Us With Love. This ambition is very time consuming. It means we have to dig deep to influence entire industries, and make better products in terms of innovation, sustainability, quality production to make things long-lasting solutions.
Liquid soap accounts for more than 70% of the market, dwarfing the usage of traditional – and sustainable – soap bars, so it was definitely an area ripe for reinvention, especially given how significant the contribution of non-recyclable plastic bottles is to our global waste challenges.
Form Us With Love have brought their considered design disciplines to every aspect of the production of Forgo, right down to the touch and scent of the product. The hand wash comes in three scents — neutral, citrus and wood — and they have worked closely with natural perfumers to source fragrances from unlikely – and sustainable – sources. For example, the Woody fragrance has been distilled using timber yard scraps from Canada, while the Citrus scent is distilled from the leftover peels and pulp from organic juicing plants in the Caribbean. The packaging is also equally planet positive. Sourced sustainably and manufactured in Northern Europe, the sachet coating uses no plastic and dissolves naturally in the normal paper recycling or composting stream. All products are shipped in recycled and recyclable paper boxes and envelopes, and the glass bottle is designed for repeated use over many years.
The first batch of the launch product, supported by over 1,000 backers on Kickstarter, is due to begin shipping in July (current situation pending), and I can’t wait to see how the venture progresses from there!
All photography © Jonas Lindström Studio
