There is a quiet design problem at the heart of the sustainability movement. Brands create reusable alternatives to single-use products, launch them with the best of intentions, and watch them collect dust in bathroom drawers. The product gets used twice, then forgotten. The single-use habit returns.
We have spent years thinking about why this happens — and how to design against it. The answer is almost never about materials. It is about behaviour, familiarity, and the quality of the daily interaction.
When you pick up a LastSwab for the first time, something clicks: it feels like a cotton swab. The tip has give. The weight is right. Your hand knows what to do with it before your brain has caught up. That is not an accident.
Conventional product design wisdom says: if you are redesigning something, make it look different. Signal the change visually. We think this is wrong for everyday products. When an object is deeply habitual — you reach for it without thinking — the redesign needs to slot into that habit, not interrupt it.
This is the core design principle behind everything we make at LastObject, and it is explored in depth in the Better Objects piece on why the best new products look exactly like the old ones. The argument is simple: familiarity is not a limitation. It is a feature. An object that feels instantly right gets used. An object that demands a learning curve gets abandoned.
When we were developing LastSwab, we spent months on the tip. Silicone was the obvious material choice for durability and hygiene — but early silicone tips were too firm, too slippery, too unlike cotton. We kept testing until we found a TPE compound that compresses and drags the way cotton does. Users in blind tests could not reliably tell the difference in the actual cleaning task.
The case was equally considered. It needed to be pocketable, to click shut satisfyingly, and to signal care for the object inside. We settled on a polypropylene case made from ocean-bound plastic — not because it was easier or cheaper, but because it made the environmental story legible in the object itself.
The full material breakdown — what LastSwab is made from and why — is documented on the Better Objects design blog. We think transparency about materials is part of good design, not a marketing afterthought.
A product that lasts 10 years but gets used for 3 months is not a sustainable product. Longevity only matters if the object stays in active rotation. This is why we obsess over the daily ritual: how the object is stored, how it is cleaned, how it is put away.
LastSwab lives in a case. You open it, use it, rinse it, close it. The case sits on your shelf, visible and ready. That closed loop — case as home — turns the reusable swab from a chore into a habit. The object earns its place in your routine.
We have written more about this — the three design principles that determine whether a sustainable product gets used or forgotten — over at Better Objects. It is worth reading if you think about product design or sustainable consumption.
We are a Copenhagen studio. That means something specific to us, beyond geography. Scandinavian design has a long tradition of refusing the distinction between "designed" and "everyday" — the idea that good design belongs in museums and bad design is acceptable for objects you actually use. The great Danish designers of the 20th century made chairs, cutlery, clocks. Objects for Tuesday morning.
We think the most interesting design problem right now is the same: take the objects that are so mundane they have never been designed at all — cotton swabs, tissues, makeup pads — and design them well. Make them reusable, make them last, make them feel right in the hand.
Better Objects is where we explore these ideas in writing. If you are interested in the thinking behind LastObject's products, the Better Objects blog is the best place to follow along.
