Vaia: giving storm-hit trees back their dignity
In 2018, storm Vaia brought down an estimated 42 million trees in Northern Italy. This represents 8 million cubic metres of wood, the same amount harvested in one year in the whole country.
Italian startup Vaia has developed a passive loudspeaker for smartphones using exclusively this wood as a raw material. The Vaiacube uses natural resonance and acoustic carving of the red spruce, a popular wood among luthiers, to reproduce a warm, deep sound.
Vaia's vision can be summarised as follows: building objects that benefit both man and nature, from raw materials coming from areas wrecked by natural disasters, thus giving them back their worth and dignity and limiting the environmental damage to its minimum.
Vaia creates value from otherwise discarded wood and reinvests parts of its profit in the regeneration of forests. For each VaiaCube bought, the startup allocates funds to plant a new tree. The company’s target, to plant 50 000 new trees, has reached 57 % of its completion.