Dell’s Latest Packaging Innovation Helps India Breathe Clean
If you’ve travelled to places like India and China recently, you know that air quality is a serious concern. Growing up in Delhi, I’ve personally witnessed the rapid decline in air quality over the years. In November 2017, Delhi’s air quality was so bad that it was similar to smoking 50 cigarettes per day.
So when Chakr Innovation came to Dell’s internal Innovation Olympics last year to pitch us on a business solution that addresses this very issue, we were all ears.
*Source Wikimedia.org
Chakr Innovation is an India based start-up with a purpose very similar to Dell’s- enable human progress. The company was founded by three young engineers who believed that our quality of life depended on the quality of air we breathe. The team developed a technology that captures the soot from diesel generators and turns it into a carbon black used to make ink. Dell now uses the ink on 1.5 million Dell boxes that ship out of India each year.
Overall, Dell ships approximately 8.4 units per second. At that volume, it is imperative to design our packaging and shipping processes around efficiency and waste minimization. This invites the opportunity for innovation – highlighting the value of innovators like Chakr so we can help Dell and our customers reduce their waste through creative design, innovative material choices and better logistics.
Here’s how Chakr’s process works…
- Diesel generators are retrofitted with the Chakr Shield to capture particulate matter from the exhaust.
- Carbon black is extracted from the soot.
- The carbon black is then mixed to create the ink that Dell then prints with.
*Photos courtesy of Chakr Innovation
We estimate that our use of the process will help clean the equivalent amount of air breathed annually by about 110,000 people.
We see many other applications for this ink, and will continue to seek ways to substitute more sustainable solutions in pursuit of our goal of achieving 100% sustainable packaging by 2020.
It’s these types of innovations that Dell loves to support and help scale. We’re all about supporting companies offering solutions that can assist with different environmental and social issues that impact our society. If you have an innovative product that helps us meet our 2020 Legacy of Good goals we invite you to share with us @dell4good #legacyofgood or .