Gary Steel
New Zealand project successfully raises funds for sustainable speaker.
WE ALL KNOW the routine: you buy a nice new product, only to find it’s been replaced six months later with a similar product with new features and innovations that a) make you feel like a fool for not waiting for the new iteration or b) tempt you into handing over yet more cash. New Zealand’s The Module Project reckons there’s a different way, and it’s setting out to prove it with its first product line, the Decibel speaker.
A few weeks back, The Module Project successfully crowd-funded for the Decibel portable wireless speaker – so successfully, in fact, that they more than doubled their initial dollar target.
Aiming to launch early next year, the Decibel is billed as high performance, sustainable, upgradable, customisable and recyclable”, a mission statement that’s key to The Module Project’s ethos.
“Decibel, our first product, is the first step toward repairing the problem with current, large technology brands,” says managing director Ketzal Sterling. “They sell consumers replacement devices by heavily promoting incremental upgrades and by making sure their current device has a limited viable lifecycle. This is wasteful of both resources and energy. It shows complete disregard for both their customers and the environment.
“Module aims to change how we as consumers interact with consumer technology. Module is a company with the sole purpose of designing and manufacturing the longest lasting technology products ever created.”
Sterling maintains that the company’s first product, the Decibel speaker, will be a demonstration of that commitment.
Clearly, the success of the company’s crowd-funding campaign shows much interest for the idea, but how innovative and/or practical is the idea, really?
Witchdoctor applauds The Module Project for having a sustainable ethos, and the truly modular, interchangeable nature of the Decibel speaker is pretty cool, but we have to ask: what about the sound? The other thing that strikes us is that of all the contemporary electronic products, the portable wireless speaker is hardly the one that’s crying out for this approach. If we look for instance, at some of the top wireless speakers on the market, they’re not exactly crying out for new bells and widgets after a year or two on the market. Perhaps they’re just testing the water with the Decibel, and next year, they’ll have something really exciting for us, like a sustainable mobile phone!
Watch a The Module Project/Decibel video here.
