Building sustainable products is necessary but not sufficient. To make an impact, the entire production and supply chain must be reinvented. Raw material sourcing, energy consumption, assembly processes are to be disciplined if we (the human race) want to have a future. And within production, industrial waste -waste generated by the production of goods- plays a significant role. It is a reality for every product being manufactured and the LINEDOCK is no exception. Here is what we decided to do with it.

Building sustainable products is necessary but not sufficient. To make an impact, the entire production and supply chain must be reinvented. Raw material sourcing, energy consumption, assembly processes are to be disciplined if we (the human race) want to have a future. And within production, industrial waste -waste generated by the production of goods- plays a significant role. It is a reality for every product being manufactured and the LINEDOCK is no exception. Here is what we decided to do with it.

Consumer electronics are made of, well, electronics : tiny components soldered on a Printed Circuit Board (PCB). PCB's are tailor-made for every product. They are etched and cut out of large rectangular panels of fiberglass. The shape of a PCB itself is dictated by the available space inside the end product, and it is almost never a perfect rectangle. Cutting non-rectangular shapes out of a large rectangular shape therefore results in waste. Due to the massive battery of the LINEDOCK, the PCB has a strongly concave shape. The assembly process requiring PCB's to be panelized in pairs (facing each other), this leaves a large rectangular area in the middle. When asking our suppliers about the afterlife of this rectangle, we were told it was simply “industrial waste.”

Consumer electronics are made of, well, electronics : tiny components soldered on a Printed Circuit Board (PCB). PCB's are tailor-made for every product. They are etched and cut out of large rectangular panels of fiberglass. The shape of a PCB itself is dictated by the available space inside the end product, and it is almost never a perfect rectangle. Cutting non-rectangular shapes out of a large rectangular shape therefore results in waste. Due to the massive battery of the LINEDOCK, the PCB has a strongly concave shape. The assembly process requiring PCB's to be panelized in pairs (facing each other), this leaves a large rectangular area in the middle. When asking our suppliers about the afterlife of this rectangle, we were told it was simply “industrial waste.”

We were not having it. So we decided to turn what should have been a wasted PCB into a sprue card that, once assembled, gives life to a nice little robot: Eliott. A mix of our love for robots and the nostalgia for the plastic airplane models we used to assemble as kids. Eliott is a pioneer, bringing the spotlight on am overlooked aspect of our consumption. He is inviting us to think about all the byproducts we generate without knowing it, to look beyond product packagings and to inquire How the products we buy have been manufactured. As an assembly project, he is also reminding us all that we were once children.

We were not having it. So we decided to turn what should have been a wasted PCB into a sprue card that, once assembled, gives life to a nice little robot: Eliott. A mix of our love for robots and the nostalgia for the plastic airplane models we used to assemble as kids. Eliott is a pioneer, bringing the spotlight on an overlooked aspect of our consumption. He is inviting us to think about all the byproducts we generate without knowing it, to look beyond product packagings and to inquire How the products we buy have been manufactured. As an assembly project, he is also reminding us all that we were once children.