There’s no denying that AirTag has made quite a dent in the growing item tracker business, but it wasn’t the one to launch it. I remember when Tile was the only game in town, basically launching the industry on its own. Now, there are tons of options including trackers from Apple and Samsung directly.
While there are definitely options, the trend towards sustainability — and the scrutiny that comes with it — hasn’t made it to the item trackers just yet. Chipolo, one of the more popular item tracker makers out there, wants to put a spotlight on that fact.
Today, the company announced a special edition of its CARD Spot tracker. You’ve likely seen something like it but, if you haven’t, the CARD Spot is about the size of a credit card so, if you’re trying to track something like a wallet, you can slide a CARD Spot in and have peace of mind if you ever lose it.
What’s different about this limited edition run of CARD Spot item trackers is their plastic imperfections. The company is selling 10,000 of these ‘Perfectly Imperfect’ CARD Spots in a campaign to highlight sustainability. Chipolo says that, instead of discarding this batch of item trackers due to cosmetic imperfections, they want to “inspire a shift in perspective.”
Launching this line of products on the market is also a representation of Chipolo’s commitment towards sustainability, as it uses plastic that, due to some imperfections it presents, would otherwise have been discarded, and only afterwards be sent to post-consumer plastic recycling.
I don’t know if this is a sustainability campaign as much as it is an excuse to sell products with cosmetic imperfections, but it’s an argument worth having. Should every product that ends up with a cosmetic imperfection during manufacturing get scrapped? Should we, as consumers, demand design perfection right out of the box?
It’s something worth thinking about, especially when there are sustainable benefits to letting go of those kinds of expectations.
