From the way a product is designed to the way it enters our routines: rethinking consumption means recognizing what is needed, removing what is superfluous, and bringing greater intention to every choice.

Every product is the result of a long sequence of decisions, many of which remain invisible.

There are the raw materials used to formulate it, the container that protects it, the elements that accompany it, the way it is transported. But there are also all the extras that, at some point, someone decided not to add.

Do we really need it?

 

It is an essential question, almost elementary, yet capable of radically changing the way we look at a product. 

Because even before we talk about recycling, recovery or material substitution, there is the possibility of avoiding what is unnecessary. 

The same applies to consumption.

Buying consciously does not simply mean buying less. Nor, conversely, does it mean taking advantage of every good deal. It means understanding what we really need and building our choices around use, not impulse. 

Consumption is often framed in terms of adding. But what if, instead, we started with what we can remove? An unnecessary purchase, an order we could have avoided, perhaps by planning better for what we needed.

Remove before adding

 

It is the same logic that has guided many of Oway's choices for years.

In 2013, we began gradually replacing plastic containers with glass and aluminium, not in pursuit of a “perfect” material - there is no such thing - but to rethink the role of packaging within the project.

That choice led to others.

Secondary packaging was eliminated when unnecessary; dispensers were designed to be kept and reused; some agricultural by-products from Ortofficina found a new purpose, becoming a “secondary” material for paper production.

The common thread, however, has never simply been to replace.

It has been to question. 

How much material do we really need? How long can it remain in use? Does it make sense to produce, transport and then manage as waste something destined to exist for only a few moments?

This is where the choice of materials becomes a way of designing.

There are no materials without consequences. Each one requires resources, energy, transformation. The difference lies in how we choose to use it, how much we introduce, and how long we are able to keep it in use.

Before recycling, in other words, comes design.

Looking at the whole changes the way we consume

 

August 2026 was the hottest August ever recorded globally and tied July 2023 as the hottest month in the entire Copernicus record. The global average temperature was 1.65 °C above the 1850-1900 pre-industrial average.

What does this have to do with it? This is not an offhand observation, a digression… out of the blue. It is an essential element of context: a reminder of how difficult it has become to treat the relationship between materials, energy and production as marginal.

The point is not only what happens to an object at the end of its life. It is what happened before. 

And this is where the question can be brought much closer to us.

How accustomed are we to thinking of each purchase as something isolated?

One product today, another a few weeks from now.

A need that is already clear, but spread across multiple orders. A routine we know consists of several steps and that, despite this, we continue to build in fragments. 

The issue here is not buying more or less. It is understanding whether we are buying in a way that is consistent with what we really need. It is a small but important shift in perspective: from the individual product to the logic of the whole.

 

A complete routine, in a single choice

 

The same logic can be applied to how we build our routines.

When several products address the same need and are intended to be used together, considering them from the outset as part of a single pathway helps move beyond fragmented purchasing: fewer subsequent orders, fewer separate steps, and a choice that is closer to actual use.

From this reflection, Oway has brought together a number of complete routines, pairing complementary products and offering an advantage compared with purchasing them separately. 

The reason? Simple: to make it easier to plan for what is already needed.

A coherent gesture, aligned with a question that accompanies every stage of the project: can we obtain what we need without multiplying what we do not?

And in the end, what changes will not be so much what we use… as the way we bring it into our everyday lives.