Speaker Manufacturer Faces Criticism over Sustainability Claims
Friday, January 3, 2020 - 11:26:48
Sonos has gained a lot of traction in recent years thanks to its wide range of wireless speaker solutions designed for domestic customers. However, the Times reports that the firm is now in the firing line over claims that its recommendations to customers are not in keeping with current thinking on sustainability.
The argument is that Sonos has baked deliberate redundancy into the design of its speakers and has even created a specific ‘recycle mode’ which essentially and irreversibly renders the products unusable.
The purpose of the mode is not strictly to make the speakers easier to recycle; rather it ensures that they cannot be refurbished and resold after the original owners have finished with them, even if they are still fully functional.
When people sell old mobile phones and other gadgets to recycling companies, they are not always broken down for parts. In many cases they are cleared of personal data, fixed up where necessary and sold on again, which is certainly the most sustainable approach to the issue of e-waste.
In the case of Sonos, it seems that the manufacturer is unwilling to furnish the second-hand market with its products, for whatever reason. This not only encourages its customers to upgrade more frequently but means that there is no option but to break down the speakers for scrap when they do this.
Such a practice has rightly been hammered on social media, with the fact that Sonos is even offering customers a discount on new speakers for setting their old speakers into ‘recycle mode’ being seen as a clear sign of the problematic intentions behind the push.
At the moment no other manufacturers seem to have implemented a similar system, so hopefully this scandal will nip any intentions towards this in the bud.
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