Designed and made in Brighton, the fully circular cases are built to be repaired and upgraded for life.
You wouldn’t think that the humble phone case would invite much scrutiny, since they’re cheap, ubiquitous, and can usually be replaced without a second thought. However, Brighton-based design studio gomi is calling time on the throwaway culture surrounding phone accessories with the launch of its new Forever Phone Case, positioned as both a protest and a consumer upgrade.
Globally, an estimated 50 million kilos of phone cases are discarded every year, with almost none recycled. It’s an industry built on fast replacement cycles and materials designed to be manufactured far away and discarded quickly.
The premise for gomi’s solution is simple but deliberately uncompromising. Each Forever Case is handmade in their Brighton studio using 100% recycled LDPE plastic films – materials like plastic bags, pallet wrap, and food packaging that most UK councils still class as non-recyclable. When the case becomes scuffed or damaged, customers send it back to be repaired for free. When they upgrade their phone, they return the case, and gomi melts and presses the same material into a new version for the latest model.
Tom Meades, co-founder at gomi, is blunt about the problem the studio is trying to solve. “The phone case industry is estimated to be worth around £25bn globally – selling products that don’t last, to keep you buying more,” he says. “It’s the definition of waste. We knew we’d only design a phone case if it was exciting enough to disrupt a broken system.”
Rather than treating recycling as an end-of-life solution, gomi’s model is built around permanence, with the Forever Case designed to never become waste. “If it breaks, we repair it for free,” Tom explains. “If you upgrade your phone, you send the case back, and we melt it into your new model. Same material. Same marbling. No waste.”
The marbling is a key feature that’s both beautiful and functional, because the cases are hand-formed from melted waste plastic, so no two are ever the same. This gives the cases an added USP, as each one has a distinctive, one-of-one surface pattern, leaning into individuality rather than uniformity.
That’s a quality that gomi customers have come to associate with the brand’s wider range of products, from speakers powered by second-life e-bike batteries to power banks made from reclaimed materials.
The Forever Case launches initially across seven iPhone models, including the iPhone 16 and 17, with more formats planned. Like all gomi releases, production is intentionally limited and crafted in small batches by a team of designers and makers, many of whom are graduates of the University of Brighton.
What sets the project apart is both its material innovation and its refusal to play by conventional consumer rules. The Forever Case doesn’t encourage upgrades or seasonal refreshes; instead, it asks users to commit to an object, return it, and trust the process. Given how cheap plastics and planned obsolescence dominate the category, it’s quite a radical proposition they’re offering.
But, as gomi frames it, this isn’t just a new product launch. It’s a challenge to an industry that has normalised waste and proof that even the most overlooked everyday objects can be redesigned with longevity, locality, and responsibility at their core.
