Stockholm, Sweden

2010

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

Some 150 kilometers south of Stockholm where A Good 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 fiber crop cultivated in the cooler regions of the world.

And it’s remarkably versatile.

The seeds have high levels of fiber 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.

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 the summer and switches to hydroelectricity in the winter and has created a closed system for wastewater.