Covered by Gizmodo and other blogs some time ago, these cardboard speakers made by the Japanese company MUJI arrive flat – packed in a tidy EVA plastic pocket. EVA is, by the way, Ethyl Vinyl Acetate, a chlorine-free alternative to the environmentally-unfriendly-but-universal PVC. EVA is not recyclable in most places.

A neat product, but I wonder – how much of the speaker component can be made of one material? The cones are often paper – what about the frame? In my mind, the ideal “cardboard speaker” would be made of biodegradable sugar cane pulp, and the copper wire and magnets would pull out for separate disposal. Acoustic qualities would probably suffer… any other ideas?

Link at the MoMAstore

The MoMAstore also has a great bio on MUJI:

Their guiding principle is flexibility-allowing consumers to select and purchase what they need and want-without waste and without forcing them to buy components with no relevance to their lives.

Lin

Related Posts: Packaging for Recyclability, Terrible Vinyl Refrigerator

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See Also: Cardboard Furniture,Granite Gear’s Green Packaging,PVC Alternatives, Espresso machines,

This entry was posted by Jeffrey Warren on Wednesday, March 29th, 2006 at 12:12 am and is filed under Design, Environment. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.