Dell's Greener Packing Saving Them $8 Million

Dell on Tuesday said it would eliminate about 20 million pounds of packaging materials it sends with its products over the next four years, saving more than $8 million.

Overall, the company plans to help the environment and save more than 150,000 trees by reducing desktop and laptop packaging materials by about 10% worldwide and ensure that 75% of packaging components are "curbside recyclable" by 2012.

Dell's previous major initiative to reduce outbound packaging resulted in the company exceeding its goal of 10 million pounds by nearly 10% in 2007, according to Dell. In its latest initiative, the company plans to use recycled materials made of milk jugs and laundry detergent bottles for packaging.

Over the next year, Dell estimates that it will use nearly 2 million milk jugs recycled as cushions to protect its Studio Hybrid system, a mini-desktop that's Dell's most environmentally friendly consumer product. Overall, the company also plans to integrate next year 33 million recycled milk jugs into desktop and laptop packaging.

In addition, Dell launched Greenprint Advisor, a free, Web-based resource center that offers other organizations information on Dell's green initiatives. The site is available initially to U.S. businesses and organizations. Dell plans to expand it to a global audience in the coming months.

"We're challenging every technology company to join us in implementing a global green packaging strategy," Tod Arbogast, director of Sustainable Business at Dell, said in a statement. "In doing so, we will drive extraordinary environmental and cost savings for our businesses and customers while setting a new efficiency model for other industries to follow."