The archive · Design & Visual · Product decision · 2022
Maxx Flash's Killer Pack kills mosquito larvae wherever its packaging is thrown away
Maxx Flash lined its 100% biodegradable coil packaging with a probiotic that kills mosquito larvae, turning disposal into a weapon against dengue and malaria.
Maxx Flash
What it had to solve
In India, dengue and malaria were at an all-time high even outside the monsoon season. Households used mosquito repellent coils inside, but authorities found garbage collection points were the breeding grounds, so the problem stayed outside the coils' reach.
How it works
In India, dengue and malaria were at an all-time high even outside the monsoon season. Households fought mosquitoes inside with repellent coils, but authorities found the real breeding grounds were outside: garbage collection points were acting as breeding sites for disease-carrying mosquitoes.
Maxx Flash, a mosquito repellent brand, answered outside the home as well as inside it with The Killer Pack. Its 100% biodegradable packaging is lined with 5% Active Probiotic Bacillus thuringiensis, which kills mosquito larvae when the pack is disposed of in garbage dumps, dustbins and stagnant water — breaking the cycle that coils alone could not reach.
The trick is that the fix happens at the throwaway moment: no new behaviour, no separate product, just the coil pack doing a second job after its first one is finished. The D&AD jury called it 'a killer idea' and 'packaging with a second life' that does its job in the landfill without any special treatment, and the work is filed in the D&AD awards archive.
Why it lands
- It attacked mosquitoes where the disease actually bred — outside at garbage points — instead of only inside the home.
- The packaging killed larvae at the moment of disposal, so the campaign demanded no behaviour change from households.
- A biodegradable, probiotic-lined pack rode the product's own supply chain, turning every coil sale into larvicide distribution.
- The mechanism was explainable in one line, which is why the D&AD jury could see it and endorse it as packaging with a second life.
What it did
Every coil purchase became a larvicide drop at the exact spots mosquitoes breed, attacking the disease outside the home instead of only inside it. The D&AD jury called it 'a killer idea' and 'packaging with a second life' that needs no special treatment — just throw it away and it works in the landfill — and the work is filed in the D&AD awards archive.
What you can take
Give the packaging a second function at the moment it is thrown away: the disposal step itself does the fix, so nobody has to change behaviour.
Since then
The Killer Pack was dated to February 2022 in India and ran into the 2022 awards cycle, where the D&AD archive files the work; the jury singled out the pack's second life in landfill. The archive records no sales figures, but the transferable shape is clear: find the moment a product is discarded and give that moment a job connected to the problem the product fights.
Sources
spotted an error? The archive wants to know.
Your turn
You just read one. Describe the brief you are staring at, and see who has been given the same problem.
Free account · 3 free questions · no card