QUESTIONS ANSWERED BY YOUR FAVORIT BRANDS

• What do About Recycling Excess Electronic Components?

• Find People Who Value the Components: We had a bunch of left over LED cables that we couldn’t use in any of our bags. We found that lots of people wanted them and we gave them away via this blog. We’d like to do more of this.

  Fewer Components: Adapter plugs for UK AC adapters made up a big portion of the weight. We came up against a large minimum order quantity and simply had more than we needed on hand. When we switched over to a battery that charged from any USB port, we were able to make the AC charger an optional component thus eliminating nearly all waste in this category.

  Reduce Spec Failure: We test all incoming parts to conformance with our specification and sometimes they fail. In one case several years ago, we had several thousand USB adapters that didn’t work properly with Apple’s USB cable. In another, the circuit box that connects panels together was missing a necessary resistor. We’ve greatly reduced this type of failure by doing more testing of initial samples, ordering smaller initial orders (especially with new suppliers) and by finding suppliers that we trust to produce high quality components.

  Concurrent Ordering: While not perfect, we try to align all of our component purchases and not order too much of a single part, especially if it is dependent on another component. For example, we changed the size of the plug on each of our solar panels from 3.5×1.3mm to 3.5×1.1mm. If we had too many circuit boxes in the old size, they would need to be discarded (and some were).

• What's In a Voltaic Backpack?

• This report details the materials used and regulatory compliance for each component of one of our solar backpacks. When sourcing materials for our products, we look for ones with lower embedded energy and less toxicity than traditional materials without sacrificing performance or substantially increasing costs.

  Using recycled materials is one way to reduce the energy required to manufacture our products. Recycled PET (RPET) takes less energy and other resources to produce, reduces plastic in our landfills and has the same performance as virgin nylon.

  Many elements of the bag, from the webbing to the buckles and interior padding are made from some form of plastic. In some cases, there are several different materials alternatives with a variety of environmental performance. The Greenpeace plastics pyramid provides guidance on which are preferable.

  The European RoHS Directive is a tool that helps make sure our electronic components have minimal levels of toxic chemicals. RoHS stands for Restriction of the Use of Certain Hazardous Substances in Electrical and Electronic Equipment Regulations. We request that all our electronics are RoHS compliant.

  This is a work in progress. When we started, RPET fabric had just come into existence and we had to struggle to get our backpack supplier to use it. We now have multiple RPET fabric choices and it is considered commonplace to use RPET in bags. Similarly, most of our electronics suppliers now only produce products that are RoHS compliant.

• Interview With Shayne McQuade

• Laura Foy chats with Voltaic CEO Shayne about the laptop charging Generator, solar panels and the history of Voltaic.