Solgaard Launches Mono-Material, Fully Circular Backpack; A Red Dot 2023 Product Design Award Winner

NEW YORK, April 27, 2023 /PRNewswire/ -- Sustainable travel and lifestyle brand, Solgaard announces the launch of its first mono-material, fully circular backpack. Named a 2023 Red Dot: Product Design Award Winner, the Solgaard Circular Backpack is made from recycled and recyclable materials, exemplifying innovative and achievable circularity in product design.

Featuring a mono-material design crafted from a single polymer: PET, the material most commonly associated with single-use water bottles, the innovative engineering of the latest Solgaard backpack presents a circular design solution for technical soft goods. Typically, these products are made with various mixed materials which cannot be recycled together, resulting in a challenging disassembly process that can prove more costly than the product's recyclable value. All materials in the Solgaard Circular Backpack, including fabric, trims, labels, and internal cushioning, have been re-engineered using exclusively PET material, which allows for simple and cost-effective mechanical recycling. Featured throughout the exterior and interior of the Circular Backpack, the durable ballistic Solgaard proprietary Shore-Tex® material made from ocean-bound plastic can be easily recycled alongside plastic bottles. Engineered to optimize daily work, life, and travel; the feature-rich backpack interior includes protected 16" laptop storage, tablet sleeve, dual carrying methods, tracking device pocket, and customized organization pockets for eyeglasses, cables, and stationery. Adventure-ready, the exterior design features a water-resistant exterior, built-in luggage strap, lumbar-positioned secret passport pocket, and power bank cord pass-through.

The Red Dot Design Award is one of the biggest international design competitions. With around 20,000 entries annually from 60 countries, the best products of every year are honored with the coveted Red Dot: Product Design Award, a highly regarded seal of outstanding design quality recognized worldwide.

Debuted at TED2023 in Vancouver on April 17-21, 2023, conference attendees and speakers received special TED-branded editions of the new Solgaard Circular Backpack, as part of the sustainable brand's in-kind partnership with TED. Speaking during a town hall at TED2023: Possibility, on April 21, 2023, in Vancouver, Solgaard Founder and CEO, Adrian Solgaard, said: "This year is all about possibility, and circularity is being discussed as far off in the future. But the solution is in your hands today. Typically, a backpack is made from dozens of materials…the TED2023 [Circular Backpack] is 100% mono-material exclusively made from PET, which means that at the end of its useful life, it can be recycled as easily as a plastic bottle. This is something we need to be demanding from our preferred consumer brands…designing for use and end of life is possible today."

The Solgaard Circular Backpack ($165.00 USD) is available exclusively at www.solgaard.co.

About Solgaard:
A design driven brand using business as a force for good, Solgaard's premium travel and lifestyle goods are crafted through sustainable innovation. Pioneers in using ocean-bound plastic in its fabrics (Shore-Tex®) and travel gear (including The Carry-On Closet®), Solgaard cleans up 6lbs of plastic from coastal communities with every purchase. Relentless in his pursuit to create an economic engine for good, Norwegian-Canadian entrepreneur, Adrian Solgaard, founded the brand in 2016 to optimize life on the go for global citizens. With over 1.4 million pounds of coastal plastic collection underway as of April 2023, Solgaard is working to collect an additional 10 million pounds of plastic via its current project pipeline. Solgaard is a certified B Corporation.

Learn more at www.solgaard.co and www.solgaard.co/impact.

Media Contact:
SOLGAARD / Emma Garner, Head of Public Relations: ([email protected])

SOURCE Solgaard