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20
Alienware Computers Go GREEN! By gramirez4527,  Jan 25, 2010

As we all know all to well laptops and their batteries need a new makeover! Why not combine the Green technology of today with newest technology of tomorrow?
Solar pannels and more efficient battery life. by attching a solar pannel onto the back of the screen so that it can charge even during use!
gramirez452720.0
  Mon Jan 25 22:49:14 GMT 2010
Comments: 1
Categories: Environment  Alienware  
Status:Acknowledged



50
Packaging-Air Cushion Technology By timbo7251,  Jan 23, 2010

I understand that Dell is using air cusion technolgy in Europe for protecting their product during shipping.

I think that Dell should consider this for all of its protective packaging applications whenever and wherever possible.

In 2009 the market was flooded by new films used in air cushion technology which claimed to be made of a biodegradable material. 2 types mainly: starch based similiar to corn starch packing peanuts and the other contained an additive that attracts micro-organisms which would excellerate the breakdown of the material.

The problem with this is that in order for biodegradation to occur certain environmental factors must be present such as air, light, and moisture.

So we now uncover the dilemma......landfills do not sustain these factors. Hundred year old newspapers remain intact and fully readable when uncovered........and if a newspaper does not breakdown under the conditions of a landfill, then most certainly any film labeled biodegradable will not break down either.

Though I find it irritating that the marketing of air cusion technolgy can be at time misleading, it is still the more appropriate product in comparision to other materials when working towards environmental stewardship.

I make a case for using air cusioning technology versus any other packing material based on these points:
Re-use, Reduce, and Recycle.

Reduce- Air technology will reduce the amount of material used in packing. Why? Air does not mass in a landfill. Paper, peanuts, foam, and other material do.

Reuse- People are more apt to reuse an air product than any other because it is cleaner than paper and isn't messy like peanuts.

Recycle- There are brands of air cushions available that use a very high content of recycled or reclaimed resins.

I am curious as to what others think about this topic and encourage feedback.


timbo725150.0
  Sun Jan 24 03:58:52 GMT 2010
Comments: 0
Categories: Environment  
Status:Acknowledged



470
Make documentation and discs optional By sensei,  Dec 2, 2009

We order lots of new machines from Dell and every time I open a new box the first thing I do is throw a huge stack of product manuals, quick setup guides, and other paperwork in the recycling bin and toss a couple of OEM CDs or DVDs in the trash.  I also just received a replacement keyboard for a Dell Latitude D530 keyboard (a part I've replaced dozens of times and takes less than a minute to replace) and it had a 42 page book outlining the process in the box!

Could you add an option to your ordering and warrant replacement processes to allows companies to opt out of receiving this documentation?  I'm sure this would reduce your costs as well as reducing the carbon footprint of every machine that doesn't come with unnecessary docs and discs.
sensei470.0
  Wed Dec 02 20:35:00 GMT 2009
Comments: 4
Categories: Environment  
Status:Acknowledged



50
USB power switch- use the usb port for charging while system is off. By cav0711,  Dec 1, 2009

Have a USB switch on laptops and even on desktops that would allow for charging while the system is off. This would help save power and be more green than running a computer simply to charge a device. In fact, the only reason why I am able to write this right now is because I am using my computer to charge my phone. Im killing my battery much faster by having it running while I charge my phone, instead of just using the power from the USB port with the system off.
cav071150.0
  Wed Dec 02 01:10:57 GMT 2009
Comments: 2
Categories: Desktops and Laptops  Environment  
Status:Acknowledged



1860
Corporate Responsibility in Marketing By tannemills,  Nov 30, 2009

Today I have just received via courier a Dell laptop Charger in a massive box as part of a marketing campaign. 

This contributes to e-waste and carbon emmissions in producing the charger and then shipping it to me in a ridiculously over-sized box.

That catch phrase of "corporate responsibility" that is touted all over the Dell website needs to be addressed with the Australian Marketing and Business Development teams!

Dell Laptop charger as part of marketing campaign in Australia - how wasteful!
tannemills1860.0
  Tue Dec 01 01:57:57 GMT 2009
Comments: 2
Categories: Advertising and Marketing  Environment  
Status:Acknowledged



70
Closed
Environment By Equinox,  Nov 22, 2009

I am about to retire my 8 year old Dell PC. Having just watched 'Exporting Harm' and 'Waste=Food', in which Ford Motors makes environmentally freindly changes, I am concerned about where my PC will end up polluting land, water, and people with its many toxins. Please accept Producer Responsibility and recycle/redesign with reduced/absent toxins and replaceable parts. As companies worldwide are realizing increased profitability in environmentally and economically sound initiatives. Do your part, Dell. In the interim, where is the least harmful place to park my defunct PC?

DELL/ Status Update

Please see william_l's comment
Equinox70.0
  Sun Nov 22 17:45:37 GMT 2009
Comments: 2
Categories: Environment  
Status:Already Offered



50
Making things greener By Chengy,  Nov 18, 2009

 The biggest rage is going green and I for one am all for it. I would like to see things just more environmentally friendly. I for one say use more sustainable products for casings. I think a bamboo casing option would be amazing. If I recall Dell used to sell something similar to that but it didn't stick. 

Bamboo grows quickly and there is no shortage of Bamboo growing in the world. It is very sustainable. It is way more environmentally friendly than the plastics that are encasing most laptops today.

I think it would be awesome to have a bamboo encased laptop. For one no other company even makes one. People will see someone using a bamboo laptop and will ask about it and it will strike up conversation. 

All in all I think that Dell has the opportunity to fill the Green niche that is lacking in the computer industry. Despite the claims Mac isn't all that green. Dell has a unique opportunity to capitalize with that opportunity.
Chengy50.0
  Thu Nov 19 00:09:30 GMT 2009
Comments: 0
Categories: Environment  Laptops  
Status:Acknowledged



50
Long Life Battery with Energy Conservation Law By diadesign,  Nov 13, 2009

The total amount of energy in a closed system remains constant over time (are said to be conserved over time). http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conservation_of_energy

Energy in Battery is used to operate processor and other peripheral, where's energy gone after that? Then, some energies also wasted as heat. It can feel around the battery.

DELL should make the cycle of energy efficiently and reduce heat as wasted energy.

All this time, laptop is designed with fan to move out the heat. Why not make a thermal electrical converter? where is the heat is converted to electrical energy. this is an explanation of this concept http://www.freepatentsonline.com/4281280.html

So, no more energy wasted as heat, it and heat of peripherals could convert to electrical energy and saved to the battery.

This is the energy recycle concept.
diadesign50.0
  Fri Nov 13 09:44:22 GMT 2009
Comments: 2
Categories: Environment  Laptop Power  
Status:Acknowledged



130
Dell should invest in Fluidic Energy By jervis961,  Nov 5, 2009

Fluidic Energy, is a spinoff from Arizona State University that "aims to build a Metal-Air Ionic Liquid battery that has up to 11 times the energy density of the top lithium-ion technologies for less than one-third the cost."  According to the article in Technology Review they have received a grant from the U.S. Department of Energy last week for $5.13-million to continue their research. Dell should make an investment in the company in exchange for partial ownership.  Sometimes its the small investments that pay off the best.
jervis961130.0
  Thu Nov 05 23:44:38 GMT 2009
Comments: 1
Categories: Dell  Environment  Laptop Power  
Status:Acknowledged



-30
Printer Designed for Reusable Paper by Printing on Both Sides By pbarnes,  Oct 19, 2009

Most of the paper we disregard at our office can be used a second time, because it is only printed on 1 side. I'd like to see a practical way to use that paper to reduce our printing supply costs and conserve our natural resources.

We've tried to implement a reuse system for papers we pass around the office, but the problem we are running into is figuring out which side is the important side. We've overcome this issue by using a marker to pen out the side that we want disregarded.

Our system is to...
  1. save the disregarded paper which is printed on one side
  2. mark out the printed side with a maker
  3. put this paper in the printer's external printer
  4. print on the clean side for internal use only (memos, meeting handouts, todo lists, flyer layout testing...).
We use this on one of our black and white laser printers to save on ink cost as well, since these types of printings don't need to be in color.

I'd like to see a printer that...
  • Automatically marks out the back side of reused paper with a big "X" or the word "REUSED".
  • With a feed tray specially designed for reusing paper.
  • And a printer setting to send a print to "Reused Paper Tray" rather than the "New Paper Tray"
This printer can be heavily marketed as an enviromentally-friendly printer and paired with lower environmental impact technologies like lower power use, made from non-toxic materials, and whatever else seems fitting.
pbarnes-30.0
  Mon Oct 19 21:21:19 GMT 2009
Comments: 3
Categories: Environment  Printers and Ink  
Status:Acknowledged



-60
Energy from Ocean Belt By visumagic,  Sep 29, 2009


Ever Green Energy
Ocean Belt is a great cycle of water flow among the oceans; touching all the continents … This is natural conveyor belt. The width of the river would be 1000,000 times of Amazon. This under Ocean River stabilizes the earth’s climate.

My thesis: Is it possible to produce energy from this belt?

Yes:

1)      Any point in the flow , the direction will be consistent

2)      The flow intersections are for cold streams and hot streams, hot streams will be flow on surface and cold will be on in deep ocean

3)       The speed of the stream could be vary

What we need:

1)      We need an underwater mountain or a heavy rock

2)      We need underwater turbines  which can stick to the rock and run round and round

Best Places to build:

1)      Maldives (India ) , Indonesia , UK, Madagascar     

 

Energy:

Abundant

Benefits:

No Pollution, No Green House effect

Challenge:

This could be a great puzzle to the great engineers   around the glob.

Name of the Energy:

Not yet decided.

 

visumagic-60.0
  Tue Sep 29 15:42:13 GMT 2009
Comments: 2
Categories: Environment  
Status:Acknowledged



-140
Paper that can be washed down the drain By shaner,  Sep 9, 2009

PRINTING PAPER THAT DISPERSES WITH WATER AND CAN GO DOWN THE DRAIN INSTEAD OF BEING SHREDDED AND THEN STUCK IN A LAND FILL.  PLEASE LET ME KNOW IF INTERESTED IN THIS PRODUCT.

shaner-140.0
  Wed Sep 09 16:59:20 GMT 2009
Comments: 2
Categories: Environment  
Status:Acknowledged



60
Closed
Buy back of Old Laptops from customers. By yuvikaasharma,  Aug 31, 2009

You can provide a buy-back option or even TAKE-BAck option to collect the used laptops at one place and re-cycle whatever is useful enough. A plenty of environment issues would be resolved if industries like yours set an exaple for others to follow. 

Dell has been my favorite lappy ever since my dad bought one.

So if you collect say 2 year old machine disburse $50 only,
Collect 3 yr old machine disburse 25$ and even older, just collect it for free. It would be alright if Dell buys my lappy back at zero price too.... if the thing does not go as junk into the City backyard and adds to environmental threats.

~yuvika

DELL/ Status Update
Check out our Trade In program
yuvikaasharma60.0
  Mon Aug 31 14:23:10 GMT 2009
Comments: 0
Categories: Environment  Sales Strategies  
Status:Already Offered



90
Better Air Quality for your environment By Piranha,  Aug 22, 2009

I work in a call center where we have anywhere between 50-60 Dell Desktop computers, I've only been working here for 3 years but have noticed that the air quality in the room is poor, even with our buildings air system going dust accumulates everywhere. One day I was moving one of the desktops and there was a bunch of dust build up on the front and back of the tower.

I thought of an idea, wouldn't it be nice if I could pull some sort of filter mechanism that keeps the dust out of case, clean it off and put in back into the case with out having to take it apart or possibly damaging components. A thought came to mind about the old Sharper Image commercials about the "Ionic Breeze" and how if collected all sorts of bacteria and dust in the air and released just the clean air back into the room. This required no filters or mess, just had to wipe it down and put it back into the device.

I think the same technology can be put into Desktop computers, keeping the majority the air entering the tower clean; but it doesn't need to end there, the same device can we put on the back of the tower where normally the hot air is pulled out of the case. So in the end the tower has a double filtering device can cleans air around the user but also keeping the air that’s in the case constantly clean

I've seen Dell wanting to improve the environment, but what about the health of people who have computers at work, home, and school? I think this is a great idea because I know from experience if you just let the dust collect on your desktop, things tend to short out or break. Cleaning the air we all breathe and saving money with low maintenance equipment and making it more efficient would be a big plus for any one.

What does Dell think about this kind of idea?

Piranha90.0
  Sat Aug 22 21:06:33 GMT 2009
Comments: 2
Categories: Desktops  Environment  
Status:Acknowledged



50
Making Dell a greener place By jussy6,  Aug 19, 2009

Any consideration been given to using the mobile phone as a communications platform to promote Dell's offers into consumers and small businesses? Cost effectve, measurable, cut through, puts the brand in the pocket!
jussy650.0
  Thu Aug 20 05:42:18 GMT 2009
Comments: 0
Categories: Advertising and Marketing  Environment  
Status:Acknowledged



-20
Tox chemical-free laptop By marsfish,  Aug 17, 2009

According to a Green Peace report Dell has the highest levels of brominated flame retardanst in their computers. How about making a laptop that's free from toxic chemicals and advertising it as such? It would be hugely popular across the States and Europe. 
marsfish-20.0
  Tue Aug 18 02:33:04 GMT 2009
Comments: 1
Categories: Advertising and Marketing  Environment  Laptops  
Status:Acknowledged



70
Live up to your own standards By JeffFTX,  Aug 17, 2009

On Saturday, August 15th, at 1:30 pm in 98 degree weather, you had your landscape sprinklers running at the Dell headquarters in Round Rock.  On Sunday, August 16th, at 4PM with the weather reported at 102 degrees, you had your landscape sprinklers running at the Dell Headquarters in Round Rock.  On Monday, August 17th at 8am, you had your landscape sprinklers running at the Dell headquarters in Round Rock.  I live within 3 miles of this facility, and drove post it at each of the times listed.  I find it insulting and hypocritical for you to push "green" and environmental issues when you were wasting water.  All of the surrounding communities (re: Austin) are now fining corporations for being such poor community citizens and wasting such a precious resource.  Three days in a row of wasting water outside of approved hours (the hours are approved because it represents the least evaporative waste in terms of temperature), watering three days in a row (when the local authorities are allowing only ONE day a week of water) and when the local water source for over 1 million in the communities surrounding the Dell campus are looking at the hottest summer on record (over 130 years of record keeping) and the local water levels having dropped to less than HALF of it's capacity. 

If the landscaping functions of your campus are outsourced, the company responsible should be fired.   If it is handled in-house, several heads should roll.  Using the excuse that the Round Rock city government has not implemented watering restrictions is unacceptable.  You have an ethical and moral responsibiltiy to the community of Round Rock that you failed to meet.

DELL/ Status Update

Please see katie_k's comment
JeffFTX70.0
  Mon Aug 17 17:34:40 GMT 2009
Comments: 8
Categories: Dell  Environment  
Status:Not Planned



-60
Going Greener By greengirl108,  Aug 11, 2009

  Your going green er but look at your website the majority of your website is white. this uses more energy. At blackle.com there screen is Black here is something I copied and pasted from there website so you can learn more. 

Blackle was created by Heap Media to remind us all of the need to take small steps in our everyday lives to save energy. Blackle searches are powered by Google Custom Search.

Blackle saves energy because the screen is predominantly black. "Image displayed is primarily a function of the user's color settings and desktop graphics, as well as the color and size of open application windows; a given monitor requires more power to display a white (or light) screen than a black (or dark) screen." Roberson et al, 2002

In January 2007 a blog post titled Black Google Would Save 750 Megawatt-hours a Year proposed the theory that a black version of the Google search engine would save a fair bit of energy due to the popularity of the search engine. Since then there has been skepticism about the significance of the energy savings that can be achieved and the cost in terms of readability of black web pages.

We believe that there is value in the concept because even if the energy savings are small, they all add up. Secondly we feel that seeing Blackle every time we load our web browser reminds us that we need to keep taking small steps to save energy.

I'm not done yet, I am thinking about getting a laptop so I began searching for a greener one like my Cell phone a Motorola Renew from T-Mobile but I could not find any. Look into manufacturing one.

greengirl108-60.0
  Tue Aug 11 19:51:36 GMT 2009
Comments: 2
Categories: Dell Web Site  Environment  
Status:Acknowledged



410
Dell should recycle packaging. By godssax,  Jul 23, 2009

This summer we have ordered 150 new computers and was left with 300 boxes, plus enough styrofoam and plastic wrap to insulate a small house once everything was unpacked.

Would it be possible, with Dell's new recycling program to maybe take back the empty packaging from computers and monitors and reuse, or at least recycle?
godssax410.0
  Thu Jul 23 21:25:50 GMT 2009
Comments: 1
Categories: Environment  
Status:Acknowledged



100
Save the Planet, Money and Time Delpoying Dell computers By wrightiboy,  Jul 8, 2009

Can you stop supplying every piece of Dell equipment with useless unecessary pieces of plastic, twist cables, polythene bags and unrecylcable polytstyrene.
e.g. unnecessary plastic pin covers on power cables, video cables wrapped in polythene bags, keyboards and mice wrapped in ploythene, video, mice and keyboard cables with multiple twist cables on it,
Dell could save a fortune by reveiwing what unnnecessay bits of plastic and polythene items do and don't need to be used and by removing half of them your profits could go up.
It also takes nearly 10 minutes to get a Dell computer out of its box and setup on the desk. 5 minutes of which is unbagging cables unwrapping twist cables and throwing away unnecessary plastic covers. Deploying 100 computers you could save 500 minutes if these items were not in the way of the deployment.
Penultimately stop using Polystyrene as a packing material (Plastic PS 6 triangle). It is impossible to recycle as it is not cost effective for recyclers to recycle it. Polystyrene is being used as packing in monitors, stop it please.
Lastly all these bits of plastic polythene and wire are not good for the environment, even if they are recycled.
So save Dell lots of money, save your customers time deploying equipment and save the planet, stop using these unnecessary useless items in the packing of the computers
(p.s. Don't get me started on documentation and books included with Dell equipment, you don't need half od that either)
wrightiboy100.0
  Wed Jul 08 13:32:07 GMT 2009
Comments: 2
Categories: Desktops and Laptops  Environment  
Status:Acknowledged


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