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. Read the rest of this entry »