Orange County Register

Bad information from the PR person for Fabrik led us all to believe that the bamboo in the company’s new green hard drives is grown at its office in Orange County. My mind even conjured up an image of giant bamboo stalks in the middle of the manufacturing floor at the Santa Ana plant and  someone coming in weekly to chop down the fast-growing plant then pounding it into shape.

But no. Not at all. The bamboo is grown in China, where Fabrik contracts a manufacturer to build the new [re]drives. And the bamboo comes from a nearby bamboo grower in China. It’s not even grown in the same building!  (So, ignore the sentence in Fabrik’s press release that says, “The bamboo is naturally grown local to Fabrik’s manufacturing facility so the material is not transported over long distances.”)

Since I had Matt McRae, Fabrik’s vice president of marketing, on the line, I let him tell me a bit more about how green the [re]drive really is.

To put all my bamboo questions to rest, McRae explained that the bamboo Fabrik chose grows about 60 feet a year. A bamboo grower near to the manufacturing factory in China steam presses the bamboo into shape. No glue, varnish or other harsh chemicals are used on the bamboo.

Bamboo was chosen for marketing purposes. The company asked its retail customers about what they wanted in a hard drive. Green themes were definitely in (security was also mentioned). In fact, stores told McRae that green was going to be huge this fall so consumers should start seeing stuff like a bunch of green gadgets on the end of aisles.

“We don’t actually own our manufacturing facilities. We use ODMs (original design manufacturer). We signed a confidentiality agreement and then told them the product we wanted them to build. They looked at us like we were crazy because they’d never built a bamboo hard drive before. Together, we found two or three different suppliers who could do bamboo for us,” McRae said.

The contract manufacturer makes the hard drive cases and then ships them to Santa Ana, where local workers put the actual hard drive inside before shipping it off to stores. If employees in Santa Ana had to grow, harvest, pound and install the bamboo into the hard drive case, that just wouldn’t be very efficient for the company or the Earth, McRae said.

“Bamboo doesn’t grow well here. We’d have to do more assembly here because we didn’t get a finished product in China. It’s more efficient for the environment to do it (add bamboo) at that stage than to do it here,” he said.

The bamboo isn’t just cosmetic. It’s a thick piece that offers structural support to the top and bottom of the drive. If you unscrew the screws in the hard drive case, the bamboo slats will fall off and the drive won’t be protected.

McRae went on to explain the other green details in the [re]drive.

The packaging is made from recycled materials. Even the two pieces (usually made of Styrofoam) to hold the drive in the box are made from recycled newspapers. No extra plastic bags for USB cable and the power cord. And instead of a one-page quick-install guide, it’s printed on the inside cover so as not to waste paper.

Besides bamboo, the exterior is made from recycled aluminum.  The ripple effect on the sides of the drive isn”t just for design purposes. It acts as heat sinks by increasing the surface area to help heat transfer into the surrounding air.

Internally, the [re]drive has a fanless cooling system, low-powered hard drive and an Energy Start adapter to help cut energy usage by 90 percent over comparable drives. Here is a PDF file with more detail on the drive.

Other factoids:

• Has “Turbo” USB 2.0 (huh? Oh and oh…), which is 25 percent faster than USB 2.0, which speeds up performance
• Includes automated back-up software
• Users get a free 2 GB account at Fabrik’s Ultimate Backup site (or $4.95 a month for unlimited online back-up storage).
• The recycled aluminum case also “acts as a heat sink, cooling the drive without the use of a fan, saving additional energy and noise,” says the company.
• Price: $160 for 500-GB drive

Related:

• Intel’s tips for conserving PC power and saving money
• Fullerton students win honors in Microsoft eco-game contest
• Every thing is going green, even Ethernet
• How much do Energy Star computers save?
• Earth-friendly computer bags
• Tracking the green policies of tech companies

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