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This Plastic-Alternative Packaging for Personal Care Products Is Made Entirely Out of Soap

On average we each go through eleven bottles of shower gel and ten bottles of shampoo a year—and that’s without factoring in all the other products that make up our daily personal care routines. “Why is a product that is used for about a month made of a material that takes an average of 500 years to disintegrate?” That’s the question designer Jonna Breitenhuber asked herself as she started developing her master’s thesis at the University of Arts in Berlin. The end result is a refreshingly simple take on the problem of single-use plastics: what if we made the packaging itself out of soap?

Breitenhuber’s SOAPBOTTLE is a line of sleek and colorful bottles made out of soap that can hold any type of liquid hygiene product thanks to a water-insoluble lining that prevents the liquids inside from dissolving the exterior.

Unlike traditional bottles, SOAPBOTTLE has a higher likelyhood of getting slippery and hard to handle, so Breitenhuber included a strap that can be used to make that a bit easier. Once the contents inside are done, the “bottle” can be used normally as soap so there’s no waste.

It’s a simple but powerful move—a product that embodies “the aesthetics of transcience,” as Breitenhuber puts it. “The concept plays with the process of dissolution, with the transformation of the object and the individuality arising from these aspects,” she explains.