Fujitsu's PCs Get Corny
If ASUS can make a bamboo laptop, why can't someone else make a laptop out of corn? Of course, someone has.
The notebook is fully functional and looks just like a common unit. While its interior is built with regular hardware, the outside casing is made out of plant-based plastic.
More to the point, Fujitsu has adopted a revolutionary polymer that is a mix of 50 percent plant-based materials, and 50 percent regular plastics. The environmental-friendly plastic is fully biodegradable and is made of regular ears of corn, processed down to corn starch, then turned into a polymer alloy. Using 100 percent corn polymers is currently impossible as corn-based plastics aren't rigid enough for laptop use. Moreover, these polymers cannot stand excessive heat and are more likely to burst in flames
According to the company officials, this new material cuts down on carbon dioxide emissions during the manufacturing process by 15 percent. The manufacturer has managed to keep the environmental friendly laptop prices as low as the regular ones.
The notebook is fully functional and looks just like a common unit. While its interior is built with regular hardware, the outside casing is made out of plant-based plastic.
More to the point, Fujitsu has adopted a revolutionary polymer that is a mix of 50 percent plant-based materials, and 50 percent regular plastics. The environmental-friendly plastic is fully biodegradable and is made of regular ears of corn, processed down to corn starch, then turned into a polymer alloy. Using 100 percent corn polymers is currently impossible as corn-based plastics aren't rigid enough for laptop use. Moreover, these polymers cannot stand excessive heat and are more likely to burst in flames
According to the company officials, this new material cuts down on carbon dioxide emissions during the manufacturing process by 15 percent. The manufacturer has managed to keep the environmental friendly laptop prices as low as the regular ones.
One bad point: this will only be sold in Japan. And, of course, our question would be: is this really all that green? With corn one of the crops that has a high environmental impact, as specified in a recently released Smithsonian Institute report on biofuels, is this all PR and less real green?
