Dezeen Showroom: Helsinki design brand Woodio has created a range of sanitaryware that instead of ceramic is formed from its own proprietary wood composite, made with locally sourced aspen and offcuts from the Finnish forestry industry.
The bathroom collection includes a range of different wash basins as well as the Flow bathtub and the Block toilet, designed in collaboration with local studio Pentagon Design.
Each piece is made almost entirely using the Woodio material developed by the company's founder, chemist Petro Lahtinen, in 2017. According to Woodio, the material is around 80 per cent wood by volume, which makes it pleasantly warm to the touch.
The wood chips are held together by a mixture of polyester and bioplastic resins, which Woodio says help to make the products completely waterproof and impact resistant while a dirt-repellent coating ensures cleanliness.
All of the products are manufactured at Woodio's factory in Helsinki using a patented cast moulding process that does not require heat and uses a fraction of the water and energy as the process needed to create ceramic sanitaryware, the brand claims.
"Woodio offers an ecological alternative to ceramic bathroom products," Lahtinen said. "There is nothing wrong with ceramic itself. It is the manufacturing process of the ceramics that causes the environmental impact."
"Typically industrial ceramics are fired in 1,500 degrees Celsius for at least 12 hours and this heat is produced typically by burning gas, which obviously causes considerable CO2 emissions."
Woodio says that its production process generates 99 per cent fewer CO2 emissions than the process used for ceramic products, although this does not include the emissions from material sourcing, transport and disposal.
The products are available in a range of nine different colours, ranging from natural tones of beige and brown to statement colours such as moss green and arctic blue.
Product: Woodio bathroom collection
Designer: Pentagon Design
Brand: Woodio
Contact: woodio@woodio.fi
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