Turning Ocean-Dumped Plastic into PC's

Making an Environmental Impact One Plastic Bottle at a Time

Coral Reef Fish

Like all great ideas,  this one is elegantly simple.  Recycle ocean dumped plastic bottles and containers into  packaging for PC's.  Tech giant Dell is doing it.  It's another bit of genius from Michael Dell, making an environmental difference.

5 Trillion Pieces of Plastic Afloat
The amount of floating plastic is staggering and the impact is unfathomable.

• More than 5 trillion pieces of plastic polluting the world's oceans
• 8 million tons of plastic ocean-dumped yearly
• In some places, plastic outnumbers plankton 26 to 1
• If you consume an average amount of seafood, you've injected 11,000 plastic particles every year.

From Discarded Plastic to High Tech

The program is called "Dell Ocean-Bound Plastics Packaging Program".  They're pulling plastic out of the water and recycling it for their desktop and laptop computers.  It's green packaging.  The operation is commercial-scale.  Recycling organizations, volunteer groups and individuals collect the plastic.  Dell processes, refines and recycles it into packaging.  Dell says 25% of the plastic in its XPS 13 2-in-1 laptop has been pulled out of the ocean.  They want to expand by 10-times the plastic recycling program by 2025.

Next Wave

Several companies including GM have joined Dell in Next Wave, an open source initiative to build a commercial-scale ocean-bound plastics and nylon supply chain.  They believe they can divert 3 million pounds of plastic bottles and nylon fishing gear from entering the ocean within 5 years.  That's the equivalent of keeping 66 million water bottles from washing out to sea.