Sustainable material and use for the cabinet contruction

Description

With the Strøm project we want to make a reasonably sustainable speaker cabinet. This starts by selecting sustainably sourced materials, but material use is equally important.

When looking at sustainability the three R's are important: Reduce, Reuse and Recycle. It can be hard to equally accommodate for all of these three factors, but with this task we need to figure out what is possible.

The speaker cabinet construction is designed to be manufactured from the following materials:

Linoleum (the cabinet is wrapped in linoleum)
Wood based boards, like MDF or multiplex
Dowels
Wood glue
Paint

Most of these materials are sustainable on their own, but how does it look when combining these materials into a manufactured speaker cabinet? MDF can't be recycled, but how does its environmental impact compare to a material like multiplex (plywood)? How much does the expected lifetime of the product impact the environmental "cost" of a certain material?

When combining/lining a board material with linoleum it is now harder to recycle these materials individually. At least without proper separation. It is unlikely that it will be possible to line a board material with linoleum in a way, that makes it possible to easily separate when the product is end of life; i.e full product disassembly. But if it is possible please share how :-)

More investigation are needed in order to validate different materials against each other. A few materials that could be of interest:

MDF
- Usually made from cutoffs and other wood waste
- Cheap
- Easy to work with
Multiplex
- Higher grade material than MDF
- Is recyclable
- Easy to work with

More suggestions are welcome.

Definition of Done

[ ] the main cabinet material have been chosen

Documentation

The documentation of each part must be written or updated

LydByDissing / stroem