From daisies to baby's breath, Dutch brand Marie Bee Bloom has embedded flower seeds into single-use rice paper masks in a bid to cut down on plastic pollution and give back to nature.
When planted into soil and watered, the seeds start to germinate in around three days and will ultimately grow into a small patch of wildflowers.
Fabricated in a small community workshop in the Netherlands, the mask itself will biodegrade whether placed in a garden or a landfill.
Marie Bee Bloom masks can be planted in soil
The designers created the product as an alternative to disposable personal protective equipment (PPE) made from plastics, which takes up to 450 years to biodegrade and breaks down into microplastics ingested by fish, other marine life and ultimately humans. Rather than just mitigating this pollution, de Groot-Pons hopes to actively regenerate the natural environment by cultivating flowers beloved by bees and other pollinators.
The masks contain flower seeds
"Marie Bee Bloom is about 'blooming the world', so the intention is really to plant the mask," the brand's founder Marianne de Groot-Pons told Dezeen. "Of course it decomposes but I don't want to encourage people to throw the masks away."
The seed mix contains seven different Dutch wildflowers, such as daisies, petunias, cornflowers and delicate baby's breath.
These seeds are fixed in place using a homemade adhesive of potato starch and water, wedged between two sheets of rice paper.
The seeds will ...