Climate Compensated

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    Circular Economy

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    Carefully Made

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    Climate Neutral Shipping

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Fast Facts

Established

2010

Nr. of employees

8+30+3

Electricity

Solar- and Hydropower

Opening hours:

8:00-16:00

Shifts:

Two

Inspection made:

November 2019

Signed Code of Conduct:

Yes

Improvements

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Production

Conduct testing on a blend on hard- and softcover cases 

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Production

Expand assortment to new Android models 

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Meetings

Meet labour representatives next time we go 

Certifications

The Story Of Plant-Based Phone Case Production

Do you know that faint crackling sound of your brand-new phone hitting the pavement after you accidentally dropped it?

You hear the crack, you pick up the phone, and you turn it around. A quick look, and there. The screen is busted. Chances are you’ve experienced something more or less like this. In fact, every single second two smartphone screens crack in the US alone, mostly as a result of drops.

And some 40% of phones that break like this don’t get repaired at all, ending up as toxic electronic waste that’s difficult, if not impossible, to fully recycle. Phones are pretty great. They help us keep in touch with loved ones, they are our own personal portals to the world. But they are terribly resource-intensive to make, and they’re expensive to buy. And still, we fail to take care of them.

Our mission is to make sensible and sustainable everyday products. And what could be more every day than a phone case? One that protects your phone is beautiful to look at, and one that, unlike most phone cases out there, is the phone case made in the most sustainable way conceivable.

Challenge Accepted - To Make The Most Sustainable Phone Case.

A Good Company

How We Found the Phone Case Factory?

150 kilometers south of Stockholm where agood company is based, Arvid runs an ecologically certified farm where he grows linseed. In case you didn’t know, linseed (or flax as it’s also known), is a food and fibre crop cultivated in the cooler regions of the world.

Linseed / Flax Is Remarkably Versatile.

The seeds have high levels of fibre and omega-3 and are a popular ingredient in müsli. They can also be pressed to make linseed oil, which works great as a wood impregnator. The thing with the plant, however, is that the seeds are tiny while the plant is big. Arvid cultivates the seeds as a food crop, and ends up with a lot of plant residue.

For our phone case, we were certain that we wanted to avoid harmful plastics. So we were looking for an organic replacement. And the linseed plant is pretty perfect in that regard. It’s rich in resin, which acts like a starch that can hold it together. And if you process it correctly you end up with a material that suits our need perfectly.

So with Arvid’s stockpile of linseed plant residue, we had a match made in heaven.

The Process and Way of Working

Now, it takes more than a suitable and biological raw material to make agood phone case. At agood company, we spend considerable time sourcing suppliers. And a short 10 kilometers from Arvid’s linseed farm we found a small family-owned factory able to prepare our biological material.

  • The factory is run by two gentlemen, one Swede and one Canadian, and specialises in making granulates. They receive Arvid’s plant residue just after harvest, and produce pellets from linseed, that we bag and ship to their final destination where we mould phone cases.
  • Just a short distance away, we found another family-owned manufacturing plant that agreed to take on our challenge. Needless to say, we really like this factory. It runs on solar power in summer and switches to hydroelectricity in winter, and has created a closed system for wastewater.

Even though they specialise in plastic molding, with our help and a specialised tooling machine that we designed for them, they were able to press our organic pellets into eight different eco-friendly phone cases.

Given that a biological compound has vastly different properties to plastics (like how it reacts to heat), it took many attempts before we got it right, but we’re really proud of the result.

But our story doesn’t end there.

The phone cases also get beautiful prints from a nearby print shop that only uses organic paints. So there you are. With the help of four wonderful partners, just a short distance from where we live, we created one of the loveliest mobile phone cases, made entirely from biological and biodegradable material.

Our Phone Cases Support Circular economy: agood loop

We could have just left it there. We managed to make eco-frienldy phone cases with none of the traditional petroleum-based plastics that ruin our environment. Why not take it further?

Because we want to go the extra mile. You see, we don’t want our used phone cases to end up in the trash, alongside all the other stuff that we throw. And our phone cases are quite easy to recycle. They’re completely plant-based, and with a tiny bit of processing, you’re able to turn them into pellets again, and feed these pellets into the moulding machine again. And make new phone cases. So that’s why we’re creating agood loop.

agood loop

agood loop is a circular loop system that lets you swap your mobile case for a new one—at any time and for any reason. Maybe you like a new design, maybe you got yourself a new phone? Just go ahead and trigger your swap. We’ll make sure to recycle your mobile case and make you a new one.

About The Owners

The Mobile Case Factory is a truly unique collaboration of four local companies who are dedicated to working together for the benefit of each of them. Every one of these businesses receives fair wages, in addition to five weeks of paid vacation each year and an opt-in pension plan on top of that. As a result, everyone involved with this mobile case collective is able to make a living while also enjoying benefits that facilitate their personal lives and ensure financial security.

Conclusion

Who knew that an innovative mobile phone case can help bring sustainability to the world? agood phone case is a great example of how sustainability and circular economy can come together. Its locally-sourced flax and hemp materials make it a highly sustainable phone case, and its production support a closed loop system. We simply can't ignore the positive impacts this solution can create for our planet and future generations. And, who knows— maybe this model will inspire other sustainable solutions!

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Anders Ankarlid

Anders Ankarlid

Co-founder & Product Development Lead

Co-founder of agood company and product development lead. A serial e-commerce entrepreneur, and a father of three. Have worked in e-commerce for more than a decade. Mindless consumption activist.

"I want to be able to look into my kids’ eyes and honestly say: "I did everything I could to hinder climate-change”

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