But there will always be a guy in a suit in every important meeting who you’ll have to fight on this?
This is where I’m super confident. Everyone at the company seems invested and all-in on our sustainability mission. It rather unites us. Sometimes you hear companies talking about balancing sustainability against other business goals… We’re not looking to make any compromises. So hopefully I don’t need to fight anyone.
So when can we expect to see a 100% circular product?
I’d say the product we’re working on right now represents a huge leap forward design-wise. We’re using more recycled plastics and we’ve put a lot of effort into longevity and repairability. With that being said, we’re only getting started and there are so many other aspects of sustainability that don't concern product design. I hate to admit it, but this thing is bigger than me.
2030?
Well, we’ve tried our best to predict the road ahead while being super ambitious. But as you know, tech development is hard to predict. I’m an optimist and obviously a believer in good design and my experience is that new, sometimes unforeseen innovations, can speed up things quite a lot.
Sustainable design seems great, but I think many of us would need a tangible example of what it is exactly.
Ok, so most of our design breakthroughs might seem small from the outside, but then again the products are themselves very small. For our upcoming in-ear product, we recently managed to get rid of a button made from silicone — not a sustainable material at the moment — by integrating the button into the case instead, a case made from recycled plastic. Looking at the entire production flow, removing that tiny button means we don’t need to produce the tools to make it and we save energy by not having the button-making machines running. What I’m saying is that a series of small breakthroughs like that will add up.