36 min
The Sustainable Alternative for Single-Use Items | Isabel Aagaard, co-founder of LastObject Can I Laugh On Your Shoulder?
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- Christianity
Over the last couple years, I’ve been on a slow but steady journey of becoming somebody who is less wasteful. I may not get to the point of being able to fit all my trash from the month into a mason jar, but I have been making slow, intentional choices to reduce and use less waste. Along this journey, there have been certain items that have made me wonder, “Could there be a zero waste option for this?” Especially for bathroom products like Q tips and tissues. There have not been many options on the market…until today! My guest this week is Isabel Aagaard, founder of Last Object, a Danish design trio who have chosen to tackle some of the least sexy objects out there like cotton swabs and disposable tissues. They are addressing the problem of single-use items and looking past the highly visible culprits like plastic bottles and straws. Last Swab is the reusable alternative to cotton swabs, which replace the need for the 1.5 billion single-use Q tips produced daily, only to be thrown out after one use. Last Tissue saves 2 liters of water per tissue and has become wildly popular on Kickstarter. Prior to founding Last Object, Isabel designed the first reusable chemotherapy bag to reduce waste in the medical industry, and it is now being used all over Denmark. I was fascinated with this conversation with Isabel and know you’re going to love learning about these unique designs that’s changing the world!
4:22 - The Isabel 101
Isabel was born and raised in the beautiful city of Copenhagen, Denmark. She has an IT background and obtained a master’s degree in collaborative design. That background brought her to where she is today, along with her passion for the environment and startups. All of Isabel’s focus combines sustainability with collaborative design efforts. She loves exploring how to create and make things that are usable in collaboration with the people who will be using them. Isabel’s worlds meet at the intersection of anthropology and collaboration and is referred to as Co-design. It’s a field that’s grown in the last few years and has started to spread through other countries. As an example, when working for hospitals, instead of looking at patients and creating a design solution for them, Isabel creates tools to help patients design their own solutions. It takes people, interactions, and their abilities into account, instead of being a designer who decides what they think is best for the design. 8:29 – Last Object
Last Object’s mission is to create an alternative to single-use items. They started with Last Swab and Last Tissue as the first two products. There are three designers (one of whom is Isabel’s brother). When Isabel was working in design for hospitals, the idea for starting a sustainable design business started over lunch one day with her brother and a designer named Cole. In doing various research on the contributing facts to pollution with single-use items, they found that Q tips were one of the 10 biggest contributors to waste on the planet. They also knew they wanted to tackle issues that have not been tackled already (like alternatives to plastic straws). They also wanted to look at single-use items that are frequently used, so that cutting down of those products would make a huge impact. Last Object starts the design process by thinking of the simplest way to recreate a reusable product. It has to be something you would know how to use just by looking at the design. There are many iterations that happen before a final product comes to fruition. The team continues prototyping, using different forms, scaling up, scaling down, and testing with 3D printing, and experimenting with paint palettes. Last Object debuted in April 2019. The initial reactions in the marketplace started about 50/50 on social media. Some loved it, others thought it was gross, but the most important thing that happened was people were talking about it. 16:40 - Speaking of Questions, “How Does it Work?
Over the last couple years, I’ve been on a slow but steady journey of becoming somebody who is less wasteful. I may not get to the point of being able to fit all my trash from the month into a mason jar, but I have been making slow, intentional choices to reduce and use less waste. Along this journey, there have been certain items that have made me wonder, “Could there be a zero waste option for this?” Especially for bathroom products like Q tips and tissues. There have not been many options on the market…until today! My guest this week is Isabel Aagaard, founder of Last Object, a Danish design trio who have chosen to tackle some of the least sexy objects out there like cotton swabs and disposable tissues. They are addressing the problem of single-use items and looking past the highly visible culprits like plastic bottles and straws. Last Swab is the reusable alternative to cotton swabs, which replace the need for the 1.5 billion single-use Q tips produced daily, only to be thrown out after one use. Last Tissue saves 2 liters of water per tissue and has become wildly popular on Kickstarter. Prior to founding Last Object, Isabel designed the first reusable chemotherapy bag to reduce waste in the medical industry, and it is now being used all over Denmark. I was fascinated with this conversation with Isabel and know you’re going to love learning about these unique designs that’s changing the world!
4:22 - The Isabel 101
Isabel was born and raised in the beautiful city of Copenhagen, Denmark. She has an IT background and obtained a master’s degree in collaborative design. That background brought her to where she is today, along with her passion for the environment and startups. All of Isabel’s focus combines sustainability with collaborative design efforts. She loves exploring how to create and make things that are usable in collaboration with the people who will be using them. Isabel’s worlds meet at the intersection of anthropology and collaboration and is referred to as Co-design. It’s a field that’s grown in the last few years and has started to spread through other countries. As an example, when working for hospitals, instead of looking at patients and creating a design solution for them, Isabel creates tools to help patients design their own solutions. It takes people, interactions, and their abilities into account, instead of being a designer who decides what they think is best for the design. 8:29 – Last Object
Last Object’s mission is to create an alternative to single-use items. They started with Last Swab and Last Tissue as the first two products. There are three designers (one of whom is Isabel’s brother). When Isabel was working in design for hospitals, the idea for starting a sustainable design business started over lunch one day with her brother and a designer named Cole. In doing various research on the contributing facts to pollution with single-use items, they found that Q tips were one of the 10 biggest contributors to waste on the planet. They also knew they wanted to tackle issues that have not been tackled already (like alternatives to plastic straws). They also wanted to look at single-use items that are frequently used, so that cutting down of those products would make a huge impact. Last Object starts the design process by thinking of the simplest way to recreate a reusable product. It has to be something you would know how to use just by looking at the design. There are many iterations that happen before a final product comes to fruition. The team continues prototyping, using different forms, scaling up, scaling down, and testing with 3D printing, and experimenting with paint palettes. Last Object debuted in April 2019. The initial reactions in the marketplace started about 50/50 on social media. Some loved it, others thought it was gross, but the most important thing that happened was people were talking about it. 16:40 - Speaking of Questions, “How Does it Work?
36 min