🗒️ Letter from Jo
It’s been a challenging year, but not without its highlights. Our team has shifted from 11 to 8 members this summer, a tough decision when you’re committed to making a positive impact. On the brighter side, we welcomed two new babies, Austin in January and Ren in April, and launched some exciting circular products. We also made sure to prioritise well-being, with the team taking over 305 days of holiday.
Our refillable product designs have reached a milestone too, with over 10 million units sold in 2023*. I believe a business should be judged by how it navigates tough times, not just periods of prosperity.
I have pushed my own learning and writing by teaching, sharing and reflecting on my own understanding of impact. The highlight was a meeting of over 2000 B Corps at the Louder Than Words Festival this September.
Thanks for being part of our journey.
Best, Jo
🏛️ We worked on 29 Projects started that align with our 3 pillars
Our pillars are:
- Does it improve the health or wellbeing of a person or society in general?
- Will it result in a reduced impact on the planet in comparison to existing solutions?
- Is it going to bring previously inaccessible products or user experiences to typically under-represented markets?
🎧 Project focus: KIBU
- 62,000,000 tonnes of e-waste generated per year
- #1 – The UK is the worst contributor to e-waste globally
- 743,000 households with children digitally excluded
- 20% of E-Waste is Recycled
Our solution: Build. Repair. Recycle
Engaging with the assembly of products provides children with a better understanding and appreciation of the objects they use and interact with. Through the playful construction experience of Kibu, children assemble their own headphones and build up the knowledge of how products is made, understanding the parts involved. Aimed at children 5-11 years old, the modular design and print-on-demand manufacture enables the headphones to colour customised, and adapted to changing head sizes. This project was presented at the V&A Kids Museum. This project has only sold 1000+ units but it is early days.
🍃Project focus: WILD 2.0
The new case has a 17% reduction in materials, is designed for disassembly for recycling and is more compact and easier to use. When it came to reducing material, we started by reducing the size. Seeking to make the case more compact, without reducing the volume of the refill and still ensuring backwards compatibility. The overall plastic used in the case was reduced by 20% and the aluminium reduction was 16.5%. This not only translates to a cost reduction, but also reduces transport emissions.
When it came to the materials themselves, we were able to move to a glue-less assembly by celebrating the way the case is assembled. Visible snap features are not only a design detail, but enable the aluminium parts to be separated from the plastic parts for recycling without the need for a special tool - a pair of tweezers or a spoon will do.
Wild estimate that - by customers switching to Wild – we have stopped over 351,000kg plastic from hitting landfill.
In 2023 over 9 million refills were sold! All designed by Morrama. Adding this to the other clients we have created refillable products for and we're over 10 million products.
💧Project focus: ECO FLO
The new plastic free cassette will be manufactured in the UK using renewable plant fibre moulding technology that aims to reduce CO2 emissions by 80% compared to the equivalent single use plastic.
Given there are over two billion lateral flow immunoassays manufactured annually with the market set to grow to just under £57.5 billion by 2024, there is an increased need to consider the environmental impact of lateral flow tests. The new designs reduce the plastic use across the full test kit by 62%. An estimated 25,000 tonnes of plastic are produced through rapid testing worldwide
Morrama has continued investment into new tooling and hours on the development of the products ready for launch. Unfortunately, the previous launch date of Summer 2024 has been missed. Our goal for the next year is to launch our first commercial units with our partner Abingdon Health.
Volunteering and donations
340+ Pro bono Hrs RNIB value in hours for redesigned products that will launch towards the end of the year.
60+ hrs pro bono donation of time to work on a project to help the homeless and refugees yet to be released.
70+ Hours for mentoring and teaching alone
Meaning our total pro bono time fore education, mentoring and charity has increased 170%
Our goal for 22/23 was 252 hrs and beat this by some way!
Thought leadership
Hosted an in person meet up of 70+ designers for talks and workshops around sustainable design
Took D! signatories (from designers and design teams) to over 1000 globally and helped set up Chapters in Ireland, Brazil and Australia
Set-up an online community which has grown from 0 to 137 active designers supporting each other to accelerate their knowledge and understanding of sustainable design practices.
We've written articles where are ideas and process have been featured. From design in female technologoy, sustainable practices for product development and health and wellness in hardware design.
BusinessGreen - Sustainable Product Design
Maddyness - Health and wellness in product design
Our digital impact
We reduced the website emissions by redesigning and rehosting our websites. From 1.47g to 0.37g. This is a 74% reduction and we'll look to bring in further measures moving forward.
The team
We provide a number of benefits for the team, We prioritise work/life balance this represented through flexible working hours and uncapped holiday.
Holiday 300+ days taken. Allowing the team to take longer trips away or extend weekends for more family time.
50+ days of full-pay parental leave day for the new arrivals. With a flexible approach to parental leave that has allowed 4 day working weeks for parents wishing to do so.
Further to this-
We provide private healthcare that provides both physical and mental health support plus benefits for being active.
6 pairs of running shoes (50% off through Runners Needs)
4 smartwatches (though we promote using the one you already own)
3500 minute Headspace meditation minutes used
50% of the team is using free physical therapy or mental therapy sessions
Some have also taken advantage of free Amazon Prime, free Cinema tickets and free glasses/contact lenses.
As we look forward to next year, we will measure our impact through knowledge sharing, hours donated to great projects and the quality of life we can provide our team. The main way we amplify our impact is through working with bigger clients, operating at higher volumes will see the greatest change for good. - Andy
