Treehugger had a good article on whether bamboo laptops are beneficial to the environment. Besides the eco friendly looks that wood gives there are benefits to using bamboo.

Bamboo is more biodegradable than plastic, and bamboo can be harvested in a sustainable way since it grows very fast like a weed. Plastic uses too much chemicals and is difficult to biodegrade. You can recycle plastic, but we must develop computer components in a way that they can be taken apart for recycling. Until then we are just going to see these hazardous electronic parts back in the landfill.

Anyways there are more options for bamboo computers such as the:

Asus Eco book is $2000 but only includes 1 GB of ram.

Dell has the Studio Hybrid which has a bamboo sleeve option. Ultra sleek design with power efficiency. Its get just about the same features as a regular pc except its 80% smaller and uses 70% power. These cool laptops are portable and affordable. Go Dell!!

The Fujitsu laptop is actually made with cedar wood. Even the plastics are made of bio-based plastics! It’s only a prototype, but it could be the future for us. In 2002, Fujitsu became the first computer manufacturer to develop corn-based plastic and adopt the environmentally friendly material for PC parts. Original bio-based plastic has been used for a limited number of smaller parts and gradual improvements to its properties to satisfy various manufacturing requirements and increase the percentage used in its notebook PCs. The newly developed bio-based plastic accounts for about 30% of the plastic material in the housings of 2 of their prototype laptops.

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Cool looking belts made from recycled bike inner tubes. Very cool for all you bikers to display your eco friendliness.

The entrepreneur from Australia wanted a way to put all those discarded inner tubes to good use and did he find a way! Each belt is unique as they come from different inner tube manufacturers. They are hand crafted too. The only problem I see is that they are $45!

Via Inhabitat.

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Sexy pump heel by Terra Plana is made from recycled quilts from Pakistan and Bangladesh. Each pair features unique patterns though. At least nobody will be able to copy you!

You can also go for the all leather look pictured below.The leather is vegetable tanned opposed to chrome tanning which is more pollutant. Vegetable extracts create deep color in the leather.

See more eco friendly shoes at Terra Plana. The company believes in sustainable practices and materials suth as chrome free leathers, vegetable tanned leathers, recycled materials, and recycled foam beds. The even invented something called E-leather which is a blend of leather and textile fibers ‘re-woven’ to make it indistinguishable from real leather. Its produces with less water and pollutants as real leather.

Via Sexy Fashion.

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The only problem for most of us is that its $2700. Not exactly budget friendly in these times, but its the future now. The company, Calfee Design, is working to improve their production process. For instance, it wants to grow the bamboo stalks in the right size for the bike frame components. That way they can go directly assembled into the bike. It would be like having “a factory in the field.”

Bamboo is underrated and none as a “poor man’s timber”. But in actuality it has a greater tensile strength (resistance to being pulled apart) than steel. It can withstand compression better than concrete too. Bamboo grows up to 60 feet tall and it has the same width from bottom to top. As a result all the compression strength is needed to hold its own weight and tensile strength to bend in the wind without breaking.

Calfee Design who started making bikes with carbon fiber is gambling bamboo will be the next hot bike material. Its eco friendly as bamboo grows fast like a weed and can easily be sustainably harvested.

Calfee Design is also working with the people of Ghana to help them grow their own bamboo bikes! Perhaps if we give them the knowledge then they can mass produce them for the masses and make them affordable for everyone! The project is called the Village Bicycle Project (VBP). Training on construction, repair, and maintenance is given to Ghanans. The metal components are derived from used bike parts in Ghana.

See Calfee Design

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