Tag Archives: travel kit

This plastic-free oral care set is an all-in-one sustainable alternative for daily use or travel kits!

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Small parts of our routine tend to have a big environmental impact, for instance, floss is good for our teeth but it is terrible for the ocean and turns it into a plastic minefield. Toothbrush bristles as well as floss are made up of nylon which is not biodegradable but another thing that makes it dangerous is that it is designed to not tear causing serious harm to ocean life. When looking at these issues it is clear that we need to move away from single-use plastics and find a more eco-friendly, long-term solution like the Seventh Generation Beam – a customizable, subscription-based, plastic-free set that is designed to be the all-in-one sustainable oral care kit.

Did you know one billion plastic toothbrushes are thrown away every year in the United States, creating 50 million pounds of waste annually? The production of the nylon bristles on each toothbrush causes nitrous oxide to be produced and released into the atmosphere as a bi-product; nitrous oxide is a greenhouse gas that is 310 times more potent than carbon dioxide.

Seventh Generation’s goal is to limit harmful chemicals and they use plant-based ingredients, scents made from real ingredients, and no synthetic fragrances/dyes in their products. It encourages the importance of wellness is in our personal care, household products, and generally in our everyday lifestyle. The concept demands we expand our understanding of what nourishes us without harming the planet through beautiful and innovative design.

The aim is to create 100% plastic-free packaging. The challenge is to rebrand a traditional product line and redesign the packaging system to be fully sustainable while utilizing no plastic or bioplastic. Biomaterials like tin, wood pulp, plant cellulose, food waste, grass, algae, and mushrooms are being considered. It will all be sustainably sourced, preferably materials that are at the end of their lives and can be composed into biomass to regenerate depleted farming soils.

The design and aesthetics are playful, warm, organic and unlike the language, one might typically associate with “eco-friendly products” which usually only sparks the idea of “bamboo”. Seventh Generation shows that innovation and changing the things we choose can be achieved with visuals just as much as the value added by the product itself.

The kit consists of toothpaste tablets, refillable floss, and a toothbrush. While this is a concept, the aim is to make these products plastic-free as well. Toothpaste tablets already exist and help reduce product and chemical waste while eco-friendly floss and toothbrushes are also gaining popularity as people become more aware of the consequences their actions have on the environment.

Designer: Beatrice Ma

This conceptual travel kit is a modular, portable hairdryer and clothing iron!

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This conceptual travel kit is a modular, portable hairdryer and iron designed to give you an ‘Edge’ over others!

Edge is a compact 2-in-1 appliance that gives you more than your toiletries. It consists of three parts: ‘Multi Handle’, ‘Edge Hairdryer Module’, ‘Edge Iron Module’. ‘Multi Handle’ has a button to control the product for using and both modules work with ‘Multi Handle’. Specifically made for those who have meetings on-the-go, the hairdryer and iron help to wash away the weariness of travel and smoothen the wrinkles so you look fresh (or should I say profesh?). “We have adopted a slide structure for intuitive and easy combination of each module. This not only allows the user to easily combine the modules but also reduces the risk of the module being easily detached while using the product” says the team. This helps save time and effort into asking your hotel for the appliances and in case you don’t can’t make a stop and have to rush, Edge can come in handy anywhere you are!

It combines the structural similarities of the two products into one and uses one power supply to run both. The dial button makes it easy to adjust the intensity of the heat for both uses. As this product with module has to work as both iron and hairdryer, the team added a button that would allow a user to operate it without being confused even though it has a single handle. Like most devices, it can be charged using the common USB-C cable. Edge adds another necessary dimension to travel kits!

Designers: Chanhong Park, Yonghun Cho and Taekkyung Lee

Made entirely out of natural materials, this travel kit is comfortable and eco-friendly

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Softened banana leaf, water hyacinth leaf, corn-silk… you don’t often hear these terms used in fashion and apparel, but this ecologically-aware travel kit is set to change that status quo. Ditching the more commonly used materials like microbeads, lycra, neoprene, memory-foam, etc, the Banana Leaf Travel Kit is made entirely out of naturally available resources, with minimal processing, and is designed to be soothing, soft-to-the-touch but also entirely disposable and biodegradable.

Designed by Aishwarya Nair along with assistance from Studio Tjeerd Veenhoven, the Banana Leaf Travel Kit introduces a new material to the world…Softened Banana Leaf, a fabric that’s created after treating banana leaves with a “special solution” that allows them to become permanently soft and feel great against the skin.

The travel kit is a set of accessories that Aishwarya claims are perfect for hotels, travel agencies, flights, or even tropical cruises to distribute to their patrons. Based loosely on Mahatma Gandhi’s fabled concept of “hear no evil, see no evil, and speak no evil”, the kit contains a mouth-mask, an eye-mask, and a pair of earmuffs. The mouth-mask is made with softened banana leaves, while the eye-mask uses a banana-leaf exterior and a corn-silk interior for utmost comfort. Usually thrown away as a by-product of corn-harvesting, the silk is known to be soft, and when stuffed inside the banana-leaf envelope, gives the material a new lease of life. The earmuffs come made from the banana leaf too, but contain a layer of softened water-hyacinth on the inside. Water hyacinth is one of the world’s fastest growing plants, and is often considered a nuisance for the way it covers entire lakes, starving the eco-system beneath it of sunlight and oxygen. Using water-hyacinth to make travel accessories would give one access to an entire reservoir of raw-material that’s all up for grabs.

Ultimately, the entire kit is made with natural materials and elastic-cords that secure the products around your face. Use them as many times as you need and dispose them and the banana leaves, corn-silk, and water hyacinth biodegrade almost instantly, returning back to nature, rather than polluting it!

Designer: Aishwarya Nair for Studio Tjeerd Veenhoven