Dell is packing its desktop PCs with mushrooms, as part of its goal to produce completely waste-free packaging.
Speaking at a Fortune’s Brainstorm Green conference, CEO Michael Dell demonstrated some of the new eco-friendly materials his company is using for packaging, and even tucked into some of the cardboard-like mushrooms live on stage (forward to around 13 minutes in the video embedded below).
Dell explained that the company contracted suppliers to grow the mushrooms, alongside other renewable packaging materials such as bamboo.
“The mushrooms we use as an insulation for a larger product, like a desktop [PC] or a server,” he explained.
When questioned by Fortune’s managing editor, Andy Serwer, on whether the mushrooms were more expensive than conventional packaging materials, Dell replied: “We never sit round and say ‘how can we make it more expensive?’.
“We always challenge our sustainability teams and our supply chain teams. We want to do the right thing but we also want it to cost less. Those two working together… you come up with all sorts of innovations.”
Dell said the company aims to ship 100% waste-free packaging with its products by 2020.
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