A 4GB Bamboo USB Flash Drive by Staples With the Cap Removed
A few weeks ago, my friends from Staples sent me some environmentally friendly items to review, including this Staples 4GB Bamboo USB Flash Drive. I am a big fan of the clean and simple look that you get with bamboo products, so lets take a closer look at this USB flash drive.
This bamboo flash drive has a body which is made of bamboo, and that serves the purpose of not only looking good, but also reducing the amount of plastic waste created to be the housing for a device like this. In addition to this USB flash drive being made from renewable bamboo, the package that it comes in is made from 65% post consumer material. It is hard to tell from the photo above, but inside of the cap is a small magnet that does a great job of holding the cap onto the metal plug of the USB drive.
Bamboo USB Flash Drive by Staples Capped
With the cap of the bamboo flash drive affixed, you do see some seams and some of the grain is not perfectly lined up, so you know that the caps and bodies are not necessarily made from the same piece of bamboo, but I don’t think that really takes much away from the overall look. Transferring data with the flash drive went well, and I was able to both read and write at what I felt were pretty quick speeds with this USB 2.0 drive. If I could change one minor thing about the drive, I’d like to see it have some sort of small clip or lanyard attached somewhere to make it a little easier to attach this onto something. I was trying to think of the best way to add some sort of clip or method to attach this to things, and I had a hard time thinking of something that would add the functionality to more easily hold it and still retain the simple clean look. Overall though, I think this is a great little USB dive that works very well, and also does its part to reduce some of the waste out there. Definitely head over to your local Staples or grab one of these Bamboo USB Flash Drives online to make your flash drive stand out from the piles of other not so earth friendly ones that currently litter offices across the world.
Looks really nice…
Very nice looking flash drive. Thanks for reviewing & sharing with us.
I have a bamboo flash drive that was imprinted with the Chevrolet logo and was given out at a recent professional conference, as a tool to promote the Chevy Volt. While my flash drive is only 1 GB, I have gotten countless comments about the fact that it is made of bamboo. IMHO, since the insides of all flash drives are pretty much the same, the fact that the outside veneer is bamboo isn’t that amazing to me.
However, I usually lose the caps of my flash drives rather quickly, and have not done so with the bamboo flash drive. The magnetic cap really works.
@Matthias – It is…this is one of those reviews where I dont have much to say about the functionality, its just an incredibly nice looking accessory to me.
@Andy McNally – Thanks for stopping by and commenting, always good to hear from you!
@J – I just saw all the press on TV regarding GE’s purchase of a ton of the Volts. Cool that they gave out something similar to these, I agree though, for the most part they are all very similar. Some do use cheaper memory though which could impact performance and/or lifespan.
My Panda would love one of these! By the way, where did the phrase “post consumer material” come from? Isn’t it more eco-friendly to just say “recycled”?
@David – That would be pretty cool to have a pet panda. 🙂
Post-consumer is different from the generic “recycled” term. Recycled can mean lots of things, including re-use of extra waste from the manufacturing process like using small scraps left over from cutting something to make something else. “Post-consumer” is actually an even more specific and more beneficial type of recycled material because it is material made from products that have already been manufactured and lived through their respective product life-cycle. So for example here are two comparisons:
-Recycled would be if a newspaper printer took the cut edges of the raw paper and re-manufctured those back into new sheets of paper.
-Post consumer material would be if those same news papers were sold to someone, read, and then once done being used made into a new product.
So really the “post consumer” recycled material is a way of using the same material twice.
I hope that makes sense…and that I have it right. 🙂
Whoa – I stand corrected. While I was on Venus this recycled thing turned into a science unto itself! Thanks for taking the time to explain…
Ya, Panda is Kinda cool – but lazy. He really doesn’t pull his weight around here. – (shrug), wadda-ya gonna do?
@David – Not a problem, always glad to share some helpful info, even if it isnt directly related to office supplies. 😉
In the old DOS days, magnets were vorboten. I tossed some nice magnetic items to protect my floppies. Guess times have changed.
Sorry for the German misspelling. Should be verboten (forbidden).
@Claire – Yeah, I somewhat remember those days…and no worries about the German misspelling, I kinda knew what you meant anyway.
They look pretty cool! Thanks for sharing 🙂
Pretty sure it wont be an issue at all. I dont think its anywhere near strong enough to do damage to a computer.