Sustainability

The greatest enemy to sustainability is cheap junk. We have thoroughly tested our products through the latest reliability testing methodologies. We stand by our estimated life of more than 15,000 hours under normal use. Our lamps have been thermally tested, drop tested, accelerated life tested until they meet our stringent requirements. During the development cycle we use lead-free electronics in all of our prototypes, and recycle all of our prototype PCBs that do not meet our stringent requirements for performance and reliability. We actually developed our product to a higher standard for shock and vibration so that we could use less packaging for shipping!

We want your lamp to get to you and work just as well as when it left us. But, we are not willing to sacrifice mother nature to get it to you. That's why you'll notice that our packagining is quite minimalistic. We use only bio-degradable materials and as little ink as possible.

From our perspective, you're not buying a box. You are buying the product in the box. This is counter to many marketing strategies where the packaging is as important as the product inside. We're willing to sacrifice sales and marketing mumbo-jumbo because we sleep better at night knowing we're not turning trees or plastic into packaging for a one-way trip.

You'll notice we even picked a metal and paper twist tie. If you're keen, you can get the metal out of the twist tie and recycle it as steel.

In your minimalistic packaging you'll find your lamp. You won't find a USB cord or a wall wart to power it. Everyone has 15 extra USB cables lying around their house and most houses have USB plugs in the wall outlets now.

We could have sent you a cheap USB-C cable that works 3 times before it has a bad connection and a wall wart that costs $1.50 from Alibaba like everyone else. Instead we chose to encourage you to get a cable out of your drawer.

Our lamp is proudly lead free. Good luck finding that with most other electronics with a PCB these days. Lead free costs more and is harder to manufacture so most companies don't bother. 

The base (flat piece) is made of polyethylene due to its ease of recycling. We started out with polystyrene but as it turns out, even though we're surrounded by polystyrene it is not particularly easy to recycle. 

The one failing we must admit is that the mountain shell is not currently recyclable. We need higher sales volumes to be able to afford the investment in tooling to create recyclable mountain shells. We hope that by the end of 2026 our entire lamps will be easy to recycle.

So you've enjoyed your lamp for more than 15,000hrs and its emitted its last photon? Please disassemble it and recycle per the following instructions:

1. Remove the 3 screws (stainless steel recyclable)

2. Remove the base from the mountain (polystyrene or polyethylene - they usually go in the same place at the recycling center) After October 2025 all bases are polyethylene.

3. Cut the zip tie securing the battery into the PCB. That's polyethylene with a tiny bit of stainless steel.

4. Recycle the PCB as electronics recycling.

5. The mountain is garbage. We know, we're working on it.