KitBiz and Sustainability
After some consideration, I decided to sell my solar power packs as kits instead of fully assembled gadgets. They will be super easy to assemble, requiring at bare minmum a screw driver, so the fact that it’s a kit shouldn’t pose much of a barrier to anyone who wants one.
There are some practical reasons to sell kits (e.g. lower assembly costs, circumventing consumer electronics regulations), but what’s more important to me is to share the joy of making things with your own two hands. There’s nothing quite like the feeling of making something you can actually use, and it’ll give people a deeper sense of ownership.
But, building things yourself also has tangible benefits that go beyond the fuzzy feeling. In the process of assembling the kits, people will gain a deeper understanding of the product and its components. That also empowers them to fix things when they break. We’ve become accustomed to throwing away electronics when they break, but that’s wasteful, both in terms of money and resources. But if you can assemble something, you can disassemble it, and if you can disassemble something, you can quite trivially swap out parts. If the battery goes bad (as rechargeable batteries inevitably do), you can just swap out the battery instead of buying a whole new device. If you accidentally fry a circuit, you can just swap out the circuit. If the enclosure breaks, you can just replace the enclosure. If a new, improved version of a circuit becomes available, you can buy just the circuit.
One of the things I’d like to try with Bootstrap Solar is to investigate ways in which technology and sustainability can come together. Giving products a longer lifespan and reducing waste seems like a good place to start.
