The last Mercedes nobody wanted to build twice
There is a documentary circulating online about the Mercedes-Benz W124 that is worth watching, if you have a few minutes. It doesn't matter whether you care about cars. What it is really about has nothing to do with automobiles.
The W124 — the E-Class Mercedes produced between 1984 and 1997 — was designed with a philosophy that feels almost anachronistic today: build the best car possible, regardless of cost. The Stuttgart engineers selected materials for their durability, not their price. They built manufacturing tolerances so precise that the brand's own internal technicians began using the term over-engineered to describe the result. As if they had gone too far in the right direction.
The outcome was a vehicle that still drives normally today, decades after production. There are W124s with over a million kilometres. A W123 — the predecessor model, built with the same philosophy — worked as a taxi in the Canary Islands for 26 years and reached 5.6 million kilometres before retiring. The cost per kilometre, calculated against the original purchase price, worked out to less than a peseta.
What happened after the W124? The following models were notoriously less reliable. Not because the engineers had forgotten how to build well. But because the company had understood something that would change the entire industry: a perfect product is only ever sold once.
The light bulb that was not supposed to last
To understand why that matters, you have to go back to 1924.
That year, the world's leading light bulb manufacturers — Philips, Osram and General Electric — signed a private agreement known as the Phoebus Cartel. Among other things, they agreed to deliberately limit the lifespan of their products to 1,000 hours. The technology existed to make them last much longer. The agreement was to ensure they did not.
Four years later, in 1928, an influential American advertising magazine published without irony: "An article that doesn't wear out is a tragedy for business."
What started with light bulbs spread to appliances, electronics, clothing, cars. The deliberate shortening of product lifespans — planned obsolescence — went from secret strategy to standard model across almost every manufacturing sector in the twentieth century.
The W124 was, in that context, an anomaly. An exception that proved it was possible to do things differently — and which the market decided not to perpetuate.
When we stopped refilling bottles
There is a parallel story, less documented but equally revealing.
Until well into the 1970s, everyday consumer packaging — soft drinks, milk, oil, cleaning products — was returned. The glass bottle had a deposit on it. The bulk dispenser existed at the corner shop. The empty container went back, was cleaned, and was refilled. It was not an act of environmental consciousness — it was simply how things worked.
Single-use plastic changed that. It was cheaper to produce, lighter to transport, easier for distributors. It required no reverse logistics. The cost of the return system disappeared from the supply chain and transferred, in the form of waste, to the people who bought the product.
The numbers that followed are hard to absorb. In 1950, the world produced two million tonnes of plastic a year. In 2023, four hundred and fifty million. An increase of more than twenty thousand per cent in seven decades. Forty per cent of all plastic products are discarded within a month of being manufactured.
We are not more careless than previous generations. We live in a system specifically redesigned to make disposal the cheapest, easiest and most normalised option.
The BiB and the offer nobody chooses
When we designed the Bag-in-Box five-litre format at Natura Esencials, the logic was straightforward: whoever buys the large format and refills their daily-use bottle at home uses eighty-nine per cent less plastic, pays less per litre, and gets exactly the same formula.
It is not a complicated proposition. It is, in essence, the contemporary version of the bulk dispenser — applied to a shampoo with argan oil and a multi-purpose cleaner with Andalusian lavender.
The reality is that most customers still choose the 300ml format.
We say this without reproach. We observe it as a fact that tells us something about the moment we are living in. When the most convenient behaviour has also been the most accessible and normalised for decades, the friction of changing that pattern is real. We understand it. And we keep offering the BiB.
Because the alternative — withdrawing the option because it is not the most chosen — would mean accepting that the system is right. That disposable should win because it is what most people choose right now. We do not believe that.
What the W124 is still saying today
The W124 proved that it was possible to build something to last. That functional excellence, pursued without compromise, produces objects that outlive trends, market cycles and balance sheet pressures. The decision not to build that way again was not a technical one — it was a strategic one.
The same is true of almost everything we consume. Disposable packaging did not triumph because it was the best solution for the planet or the consumer. It triumphed because it was the most profitable solution for those who produced it.
The difference between it cannot be done any other way and the decision was made not to do it is small on paper. In its consequences, it is enormous.
→ Why we chose recyclable PET and BiB over glass
If you want to explore the five-litre BiB format, it is available in our shop. If you prefer to start with the 300ml rituals, those are there too. The choice is yours — which is exactly as it should be.
Natura Esencials · Handcrafted natural cosmetics and home care · Marbella, Andalusia
