5 Best Eco-friendly Materials for Tech Products

With the inevitability of declining fossil fuels, and the threat of global climate change, reducing our energy consumption is an essential survival strategy.

Today we will share some alternatives to consumer products in our daily use which are using eco-friendly materials to help our earth in an more environmentally way, such as bluetooth speakers, wireless chargers, phone holders, etc.

There are 5 choices we will share today: Bamboo, Cork, Wheat Straw, Cement, RABS.

  1. Bamboo

Bamboo is 100% biodegradable, and can be easily regenerated which is the reason why almost all companies whose mission is to offer eco-friendly products use bamboo as one of their raw materials. Bamboo products are eco-friendly as long as they haven’t been chemically processed, meaning no harmful chemicals were added.

There are many amazing benefits of using bamboo material:

1. Biodegradable

2. Easy to grow, less years to wait before they grow, it only take 3-5 years to wait

3. Protects soil structure and keep them intact

4. With anti-fungal effect

5. Sturdy and sustainable

What consumer electronics can be made of bamboo material?

1) Wireless chargers

2) Bluetooth speakers

3) Power bank

4) etc.

  2. Cork

Natural cork is a raw material that’s packed with advanced technology to deliver the best possible products。

The mother tree of cork is an oak tree, and it is usually about 20 years old that plants begin to collect the peel, which is called "primary cork" or "primary bark". After the first mining, the second mining should be carried out about nine years later. Cork can survive for 180 years, so it can be extracted more than 10 times.

Advantages of cork:

1. Flexible and tough

2. Lightweight and durable

3. Waterproof and non-slip

4. Corrosion and insect resistance

5. Renewable

Most people know this material from the wine bottle stopper. With the later development, cork is gradually used in more and more products, such as bags, hats, etc., and now it is also used in electronic products.

1) Mouse Pad

2) Wireless chargers

3) Bluetooth speakers

4) etc.

   3. Wheat Straw

Wheat straw is derived from leftover waste, it can save forests from some of the devastation inflicted upon them, it has become increasingly popular because of its ability to create a variety of products in an eco-friendly way.

When wheat straw is used to make plastic, many products become more environmentally, such as bowls, then what products can they be used for electronics products?

1) Wireless chargers

2) Bluetooth speakers

3) Charging cables

4) Headphone/Earbuds

5) etc.

   4. Limonstone Cement

Cement is a powder used to make concrete, it's widely used in crafts products such as 

Advantages of cement:

1. High compressive strength

2. Fire and weather resistance

3. Durability

4. Economy to mold any shape

Besides some crafts, cement can also be used for wireless chargers and bluetooth speakers.

  5. RABS - Recycled ABS

The world produces more than 300 millions tons of plastic every year, ABS (acrylonitrile butadiene styrene) is a big part of them. Fortunately ABS is 100% recyclable, since it’s a thermoplastic, which means that you can heat the plastic and use it again as filament by extruding it. In the sense, reusing waste ABS to create Recycled ABS (rABS) is becoming increasingly popular as a raw material in order to decrease the using of virgin ABS and make it more environmentally.

What are the benefits of recycled ABS?

1. Consumes less energy and protects natural resources

2. Reduces pollution around ecosystems

3. Reducing the waste

4. Saves depleting landfill space

5. Promotion of sustainable living

What products can be made of recycled ABS?

Amost all of the products made of ABS can be replaced with recycled ABS, for example in consumer electronics and mobile accessories catagories, wireless chargers, bluetooth speakers, phone holders, headphones, earbuds.

There are tons of ways that we can make our effort to make our environment more eco-friendly in our daily life, let's start from the easy ones, such as do not use disposable plastic cups and bags, using recyclable ones instead, purchasing products made from natural and more eco-friendly materials such as the ones we mentioned in this article: bamboo, cork, wheat straw, cement, RABS instead of virgin plastic ones.

Considering that, as of today, alternatives to plastic are yet to be used efficiently on a large scale, using recycled ABS and more eco-friendly materials is growing concerns of plastic pollution. Hopefully the inclusion of environmental materials in it will be the new norm!