Sonos Shares Plans to Make Products More Repairable and Energy-Efficient

Speaker manufacturer Sonos has shared plans to make its products more repairable and more energy-efficient. Among other things, the company wants its future speakers to be easier to disassemble from 2023 and all have a sleep mode.

Sonos writes in a press release that the company has started this year with a ‘Design for Disassembly’ program, which, according to the manufacturer, will be used in new speakers from fiscal year 2023. The manufacturer reports, among other things, that from then on it will no longer use glue to assemble its speakers. This should ensure that the Sonos speakers are easier to take apart, and therefore easier to repair. Internally, the company will add a repairability index to its product design process.

However, the company does not share much further details about this new program. For example, it is not clear whether Sonos will also make parts or repair manuals available. The company did tell The Verge that the program aims to “make it easier to repair, refurbish and ultimately recycle future Sonos products.”

The manufacturer will also start using recycled plastic for all new Sonos speakers by the end of 2023. By 2023, new Sonos speakers will all have a sleep mode, the manufacturer reports. The current Sonos Roam already has a sleep mode. Sonos claims that its products should ultimately consume less than 2W of power when idle. Currently, that is still on average at 3.22W, the manufacturer reports in its Listen Better Report PDF. The company also claims that 75 percent of its carbon footprint comes from the energy consumed by its products sold.

Sonos’s supply chain would then account for 19.5 percent of the company’s CO₂ emissions. By 2030, Sonos wants that value chain to be carbon neutral and by 2040, the company wants its value chain to have zero net CO₂ emissions. The company does indicate that it will not achieve these goals with CO₂ reductions alone. The manufacturer says it will use ‘CO₂ offsets’ if necessary to achieve these goals, such as a marine ecosystem project in Cambodia. Sonos also wants to use technologies to remove CO₂ from the atmosphere in the future. “We recognize that, as a growing company, we will not be able to become carbon neutral and net zero through reductions alone,” the manufacturer wrote in its sustainability report.

Sonos’ current carbon footprint. Source: Sonos Listen Better Report 2021