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Want to save the earth and carry data with you?  Well, since almost every company out there is on this green kick, here are eco-friendly USB drives and SD cards by ATP.  ATP also showed off their System-in-Package technology for you rugged SD card carrying folks. 

Biodegradable USB drives and SD cards

ATP had a bunch of biodegradable USB drives called the “EarthDrive.”  The plastic is made of corn.  Portions of the sales proceeds go to American Forests (they plant trees all over the world).  I’ve always wondered about this—shouldn’t the corn go to hungry people first? 

Earthcard is the name of ATP’s SD cards.  The plastic is made of corn as well.  ATP expects the prices to be higher than traditional SD cards.  The EarthDrive is available now, but the Earthcard will be available in Q2. 

SIP

If you beat up your SD cards, you might like this.  ATP uses a process called SIP to encase the actual memory part of the SD card in a solid piece.  If you open up an SD card you’ll see a board with memory on it and everything is exposed.  You don’t see any of that in ATP’s SIP version.  It resembles a piece of solid black plastic.

This process is also supposed to make the card waterproof, dustproof, and more resilient.  When the ATP rep told me to try to bend the SIP card, it took a bit of a beating until I accidentally broke it.  Sorry, Charlie. 

Check out the gallery: ATP's Earthdrive, Earthcard, and SIP tech