Dell has announced plans to increase the amount of recycled materials that’s used to manufacture including excess carbon fibre.
Dell has partnered with Sabic to recycle excess carbon fibre and scrap raw materials into new Dell products starting in late 2015. The company has initially selected its Latitude and Alienware lines to contain the recycled carbon fibre and plans to expand the programme across these two product lines in 2016.
Dell estimates that by partnering with Sabic, it will prevent 820,000 pounds of carbon fibre from ending up in landfills. The recycled carbon fibre materials have an approximately 11% smaller carbon footprint than simply using virgin carbon fibre.
Since Dell began its closed-loop recycled plastics supply chain in January 2014, the company has recycled 4.2 million pounds of closed-loop plastics into enclosures for new Dell products. These plastics were used in more than 30 flat panel monitor models and three Dell OptiPlex desktops available globally, with plans to scale across servers and other products in 2016. Dell’s process was certified by UL Environment as the first closed-loop supply chain, and continues to be the only one in the industry. Dell was also able to reduce its product carbon footprint via the closed-loop products by 11% and realised a cost savings over previous sources.