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Plants are more versatile than we give them credit for, you can make clothes with them, build with them, use them as ornaments and if your really radical you can eat them. However up until know you would have even thought of making phones with them, and its all thanks to Samsung who have unveiled their new “initiative to be more nature friendly” which means they will making some of their new handsets (the W510 is the first) out of corn.

Admittedly it is not just corn as that would be incredibly impractical, rather it is a corn based plastic that makes the casing. This technology is not new, it has been used in things like plastic bags on-and-off since the mid 1990s, but it is not till now that it has been used in such a high profile and relatively high cost product. This is due to the fact that is has been strengthened, so in the future we could see things like corn PCs and Laptops, and this could spell the end for some of the heavy metals such as lead or mercury which have not been needed in this handset.
This, coupled with their attempts to irradiate BFRs and PVC from charges and other accessories, will make Samsung a lot greener in the future.

Via [InfoWorld]

Samsung has announced their new EcoGreen F1 hard drive touting a full one terabyte of storage capacity and environment friendly features. This eco-friendly hard drive can be used as either an external or internal hard drive for desktop PCs and thanks to the large capacity it would be well utilized for surveillance applications as well as for audio and video recording.

The EcoGreen F1 hard drive sets itself apart from other low-powered one terabyte hard drives by its 15% power savings when in use, and 50% power reduction as compared to the power utilized by other traditional hard drives. Additionally, the F1 hard drive utilizes a lower number of moving parts to make it run, thereby also boosting it’s speed when in use. It comes equipped with SilentSeek and NoiseGuard, both of which help achieve a quieter operation. It also has a reinforced flying on demand (FOD) technology that controls the distance between the disk and the head which ensures data stability.

As for its technical specifications, the Samsung F1 EcoGreen hard drive runs at 5,400rpm, has a 3.0Gbps SATA interface, native command queing features and a 32MB buffer memory. The EcoGreen F1 will be available on the second quarter of 2008 for $199.

Read [Business Wire]

At the Fortune Green conference, Dell CEO, Michael Dell was kind enough to show off their latest attempt at an environmentally friendly PC. Though still in the development process at the moment, Dell has begun boasting of the PC’s potential features. Purportedly, the device uses 70% less energy than most other desktop models and it is also 81% smaller than most desktop PC’s. Additionally, the mini PC will be made of recyclable items, thus helping reduce its carbon footprint and saving the world.

Okay, so saving the world may be a little bold, but it is a cool idea, and its nice to see a big company making an effort. The device has yet to be named, but the price expected to be between $500 and $700. Keep reading for a few more images of Dell’s eco-friendly PC…

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Fujitsu has upped the ante on hard disk capacity and speed manufacturing with its newly announced MHZ2 BJ series 2.5-inch hard drive. According to Fujitsu, the MHZ2 BJ series sports 320GB of storage and spins at a whopping 7200RPM. In simple terms, it’s a fast reading, high storage hard drive for your laptop.

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While everyone else in the world seems to be forgetting about snail mail, here comes the US Postal Service putting the old way of communicating into a fresh and yet good use – recycling electronics. The US Postal Service is advocating the recycling of electronic products, such as mobile phones and inkjet cartridges to name a few. If you’re sick and tired of your broken iPods you may put them in an envelope provided by the USPS and send those electronics via snail mail. The envelope will be provided by the USPS and will be strategically placed in 1500 post offices across the US.

The USPS “mail back” program does not only promotes and encourages environmental sustainability but it will help consumers to de-clog their homes and workstations with dead electronic products as well. 

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