Technology Goes Greener: New Developments With Bamboo

It may be that we don’t always expect companies to follow through on their promises but recent developments highlighted two company’s commitment to becoming more environmentally friendly. Proporta and Dell are keeping their promises to lessen their impact on the environment and are choosing to use bamboo to help keep those promises.

Proporta, an English-based company, recently launched a new range of iPhone and iPad cases called Smart. And they are not called Smart for any sort of advanced technology but rather for the fact that they are designed to be as eco-friendly as possible.

Says Guy Monson, Joint Founder of Proporta, “We didn’t want it to be just greenwash so we hired a qualified environmental scientist [to give advice] and we signed up with Giraffe, a government funded agency that exists to give comprehensive advice to companies like us.”

While Proporta has always been good about using the highly recyclable material of aluminum for their case covers, the small company was struggling to secure the amount of recycled aluminum that it needed. So they replaced the metal cover with bamboo.

“Bamboo is actually carbon negative,” said Guy. “It’s an amazing material that actually removes carbon from the environment as it grows.”

To be even more eco-friendly, the Bamboo shield also doubles as the packaging itself, wrapping around the top of the case so it can act as a shelf hanger. When you take the hanger off the device it slips inside the case to act as a protective shield. Because of bamboo’s amazing tensile strength, it serves as a very effective protector of delicate iphones and ipads.

Other green initiatives within Proporta include the use of recycled leather for cases and also a revised shipping plan to make more effective use of routes and shipping options to reduce fuel usage.

In other eco-friendly tech news, Dell’s bamboo cushion packing for notebook and laptop computers has been certified compostable by the American Society for Testing and Materials.

Dell began using bamboo packing for its Mini 10 and Mini 10v notebooks and recently expanded to using the packing for Inspiron laptops. Dell says it uses bamboo packing because it’s strong and light. They also tout the environmental benefits of using bamboo by pointing out that the plant’s roots help prevent soil erosion and that bamboo grows faster than hardwoods and can reach maturity in three to seven years.

“Developing packaging that is lightweight, strong enough to protect our products in transit, avoids the need to cut down hardwood trees and can return to the ground to sustain new plant growth – those are the kinds of long-term, sustainable solutions we want to provide for our customers,” said Oliver Campbell, Dell’s senior manager of packaging worldwide. “We’re exploring the frontier of sustainable packaging here, and we’re actively working to integrate more innovative, agricultural materials into our packaging portfolio.”

Dell’s use of bamboo packing will not only result in an estimated $8 million in savings but it will also eliminate approximately 20 million pounds of packaging materials over the next four years.

And while you’re choosing to use eco-friendly technology that utilizes bamboo, why not make the decision to include high quality viscose from bamboo fabric in your wardrobe and household? Green Earth Bamboo offers a wide range of incredibly soft and luxurious bamboo products ranging from bamboo bedding to loungewear to women’s robes, bamboo socks to bamboo shirts to your favorite bamboo sheet set!