Skullcandy’s new earbuds have a battery-free case to boost their eco credentials

Skullcandy has launched a new pair of eco-friendly wireless earbuds that take a unique approach to achieving sustainability.

They’re called the EcoBuds Sustainable True Wireless Earbuds. According to the official product page, the devices are made out of 65 percent recycled plastic and are claimed to have 57 percent less heavy metal when compared to other products. What’s interesting about the EcoBuds is they forgo the traditional rectangular charging case, opting instead for a charging base. The reason for this, as Skullcandy explains, is that the company didn’t want to have a lithium battery as part of the overall package. They can be pretty bad for the environment. A report by the Institute for Energy Research states the mining and production of lithium-ion batteries can be “worse for the climate than the production of fossil fuel vehicle batteries”.

Due to this design choice, the only battery the device will have is whatever is inside the buds and it won’t last the whole day. At most, you get eight hours of audio playback. That runtime may be disappointing, but Skullcandy has a solution: reverse charging. Plugging the base into a smartphone via the integrated USB-C cable allows it to drain a bit of your mobile device’s battery. A quick 10-minute charge gives it two hours of juice.

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