Saving the planet

by using ocean-bound plastics in its packaging, incorporating plastics collected from beaches, waterways and coastal areas for the protective trays for its XPS 13 twoin-one laptop.

Lonely Whale is an organisation that champions the oceans’ health and the wellbeing of marine wildlife through education and awareness.

The initiative is a part of Dell’s 2020 Legacy of Good goals to ensure that 100 per cent of its product packaging is sourced from sustainable materials.

It has also made a pledge to the United Nations to increase its annual use of ocean plastics by 10 times by 2025 and to help build further demand by convening a working group with other manufacturers to create an open-source ocean plastics supply chain. According to Lonely Whale Foundation’s executive director Dune Ives, an estimated eight million tonnes of plastic waste entered the ocean in 2010.

If trends do not change, more than 150 million tonnes of plastic waste will have entered the ocean by 2025.

“Only 10 per cent of plastics get recycled and the rest is lost in the environment and ocean. Eighty per cent of litter in the sea are plastics and what we see on the surface is five per cent of what’s in the ocean,” she says.

This poses not only a threat to vital ocean ecosystems including critical fish nurseries and coral reefs but also adversely affects the health and longevity of marine species and humans too.

According to some estimates, there are more than five trillion pieces of plastics in the oceans right now, which is equivalent to five grocery bags full of plastic stacked upon every foot of every nation’s coastline around the world.

Ives says the types of plastic found in the ocean include a wide variety and range of plastics.

They include LDPE plastic bags, polypropylene, PET, HDPE, styrofoam and nylon.

Plastics can turn into smaller forms over time when at sea, so many sea animals see them as food.

“Plastics break down into ever smaller pieces but they never break down completely,” says Ives.

“Small plastic pieces can be ingested by birds and other animals. It’s also troubling to know that micro-fractured plastics have now been found in plankton,” she says.

As plastic is consumed by these organisms and travels up the food chain, it becomes concentrated in the fatty tissue with an increasing effect of toxicity.

In her talk on Keeping Plastics in the Economy and Out of the Oceans, organised by Dell recently, she showed a photo of a dead seagull with a belly full with plastic materials.

“This is a crisis for marine animals, and a million birds died a year due to plastic consumption.”

Dell plans to turn eight tonnes of oceanbound plastics into packaging of XPS 13 two-in-one this year.

Dell Malaysia managing director and senior vice-president, South Asia and Korea, Pang Yee Beng, says: “The pollution problem is particularly worrisome and together with Lonely Whale, we began to look at ways to make a difference,” he says.

Dell wants to help break this cycle by keeping plastics in the economy and out of the ocean.

“We are creating the first commercialscale global ocean-bound plastics supply chain. We are processing plastics collected from beaches, waterways and coastal areas and using them as part of a new packaging system for the XPS 13 wo-in-one laptop globally,” he says.

This initial pilot project will start by keeping 7,257kg of plastics out of the ocean.

The recycled ocean-bound plastics are not just used for making protective trays for the laptop but also other parts of laptops such as keyboards, laptop