Michael Dell is on record as being committed to make his business "the greenest technology company on the planet" and set about doing so by announcing Dell to be carbon neutral in 2008. The following year the Texas based company became the first to ban the export of e-waste (nonworking electronics) to developing countries and operates a number of programmes for the recycling and disposal of unwanted electrical devices and ink cartridges . Dell have a slew of sustainable initiatives and have already reached many of their targets in this area. But it is their Three Cs philosophy that delivered the intriguing bamboo packaging and, more recently, the fungi version.
The three Cs are described thus:-
- Cube. Reduce the size of boxes
- Content. Make the materials eco friendly
- Curb. Make the packaging materials curbside recyclable
When Dell intoduced bamboo packaging it allowed them to move away from polyethylene foam to a natural and sustainable product.
Using bamboo ticked all the boxes labelled 'sustainable', 'responsible', 'ethical' and so on, but it was not a panacea for Dell. Bamboo had it's limitations, being ideal for smaller products such as laptops and smartphones but inadequate for larger products such as desktops and servers. Then along came mushroom bioscience.
Using common agricultural waste products such as cotton hulls, rice hulls or wheat chaff, these are placed in a mold and injected with mushroom spawn. Five to ten days later the process is complete. The mushroom root structure has completed its growth without the need for any external energy. The final product looks and acts like styrofoam. The obvious advantage over styrofoam is that this material is both organic and biodegradable and can be used as compost or mulch, thus, easily disposable.
Mushroom packaging is currently being piloted with the Dell PowerEdge R710 server multipacks and the company has plans to expand its use in the future.
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