Posted by Nancy Knowlton | President and CEO of Nureva Inc.
Activities around Earth Day next week are already beginning to ramp up. While it’s good to have a focus on the environment and sustainability, a day is hardly enough to pay them the amount of attention that they deserve and need.
At Nureva, we’ve been focused on sustainability since our beginning. Very early on, we were fixated on creating products with a long life that used the least amount of materials with the smallest amount of impact on the environment.
Designing for sustainability is a journey. While we started from an advanced position and have made considerable progress, we continue to look for new ways to deliver on the vision for a sustainable future for everyone.
By their very nature, our products are good for the environment because they support remote working and learning. While they may not eliminate all travel, reducing travel and commuting is beneficial.
Our hardware architecture was created with sustainability in mind. With much of the processing housed in the connect module, it was easy to make a generational shift by swapping out the Gen 1 connect module for Gen 2. The original microphone and speaker bars remained in place. Add to that baseline strategy the fact that new functionality can be added through software and firmware updates, the hardware’s useful life is extended.
As for the hardware itself, we’ve chosen to use aluminum within the product wherever possible, because aluminum is easily recycled. And, we expect that it will be recycled because of its high value. We also minimize the thickness of any plastic parts wherever we can.
And finally, we’ve eliminated any plastics and other materials in our packaging that’s not necessary to ensure safe delivery. Also, we’ve condensed our packaging, ensuring more boxes can be shipped in the same space.
It’s the combination of all these activities and more that allows us to continue our quest to improve our sustainability performance. We work at this every day, beginning with product conceptualization and design.
Earth Day is important as a day to celebrate and remind us of the value of this work — if we need reminding — but it’s the work we do every day that makes a difference.
Every day is Earth Day.
Our approach to sustainability
Find out more about how we’re keeping sustainability at the heart of our product design and company practices.
