10. December 2021

Fed­er­al Ecode­sign Awards for Designs from Bavaria

Less Waste Club’s pow­dered show­er gels and hand soaps offer a more envi­ron­men­tal­ly friend­ly show­er expe­ri­ence. It has now won an award in the prod­uct cat­e­go­ry. (Rights: IDZ Less Waste Club UG)

Ten prod­ucts or con­cepts with inno­v­a­tive, sus­tain­able design are hon­ored at the Fed­er­al Ecode­sign Award. Two of the win­ners of the high­est state award for eco­log­i­cal design in Ger­many are from Bavaria.

Very dif­fer­ent inno­v­a­tive projects were hon­ored, such as a school build­ing with a cli­mate-pos­i­tive ener­gy bal­ance, online orders with­out ship­ping waste or a new life for old fur.

One of the two win­ning entries from Bavaria is VIOWALL, a solu­tion for the nat­ur­al dry­ing of damp house walls. Cush­ion ele­ments filled with glass foam obtained from waste glass are used. These ele­ments enclose the foun­da­tion walls and form an impen­e­tra­ble mois­ture bar­ri­er that is imme­di­ate­ly effec­tive due to nat­ur­al phys­i­cal process­es. Water in the walls is absorbed by the glass foam and dis­si­pat­ed upwards by means of evap­o­ra­tion. Unlike com­mon full-pro­tec­tion solu­tions, no petro­le­um-based sub­stances are used in the man­u­fac­tur­ing process.

“An amaz­ing­ly sim­ple and con­vinc­ing­ly imple­ment­ed solu­tion to keep foun­da­tion walls per­ma­nent­ly dry. Like a breath­ing mem­brane, the foam glass cush­ions made from recy­cled glass form a closed bar­ri­er that dis­si­pates mois­ture by evap­o­ra­tion and pre­vents water­log­ging. An inno­v­a­tive area of appli­ca­tion for this eco­log­i­cal insu­lat­ing mate­r­i­al,” said the jury in its statement.

Also receiv­ing an award was the show­er gel and hand soap pow­der from Less Waste Club UG. The show­er gels and hand soaps in pow­der form offer a more envi­ron­men­tal­ly friend­ly show­er expe­ri­ence. When mixed with water, they become a liq­uid per­son­al care prod­uct. By reduc­ing the water con­tent to almost zero and thus reduc­ing the trans­port weight, man­u­fac­tur­ing in Ger­many and dis­pens­ing with tra­di­tion­al plas­tic pack­ag­ing, a large part of the CO² emis­sions are saved in the man­u­fac­tur­ing and deliv­ery process.

This also con­vinced the jury: “The two entries are par­tic­u­lar­ly con­vinc­ing because of the excel­lent idea of sav­ing water in the prod­uct itself, i.e. less trans­port weight and plas­tic pack­ag­ing. In a mar­ket that pre­dom­i­nant­ly offers liq­uid cos­met­ics in plas­tic bot­tles, prod­ucts in pow­der form and reusable dis­penser bot­tles mean a good alter­na­tive for peo­ple who don’t want to do with­out liq­uid cosmetics.”

Dr. Dirk Mess­ner, Pres­i­dent of the Ger­man Fed­er­al Envi­ron­ment Agency, empha­sizes the impor­tant role of design in this con­text: “The top­ic of ecode­sign has gained enor­mous impor­tance. Ecode­sign now plays a cen­tral role in the cir­cu­lar soci­ety and the decou­pling of resource con­sump­tion and pros­per­i­ty. This increased impor­tance is also reflect­ed in the Fed­er­al Ecode­sign Award.”