With its Concept Luna, Dell wants to bring its range of laptops in line with current environmental issues.
At the start of January, the tech world will kick off the New Year with a bang with CES, one of the biggest tech events on the calendar. To prepare the ground before this eagerly awaited 2022 edition, manufacturers are gradually starting to distill a few bits of information. Dell started the ball rolling by presenting some of its projects, including the Concept Luna; with him, Dell hopes to lay a healthier environmental foundation for the entire industry.
The Luna project revolves around a single central idea: sustainable development. As it stands, the situation remains quite catastrophic at this level in the tech world. Fortunately, the general public is therefore starting to realize this. This forces the industry to adapt, and ‘is the raison d’être of this Concept Luna which seeks to get ahead of this announced transition.
It begins with a transition to materials more suited to the establishment of a so-called circular production chain. Dell imagines a future where devices will be fully recycled; the recycling products would then be directly reinjected into the same production line. To achieve this, Dell will have to rethink the very design of its components. The aim is to be able to recycle them quickly, automatically and in a standardized way.
Start again on a healthier basis
A concept seemingly simple, but extremely complex in terms of engineering. This implies in particular thinking about the end of life of components from their design. A measure that is common sense; but today, it is a problem that the vast majority of manufacturers are still content to simply ignore. To lay the foundations for this new paradigm, Dell, for example, wants to separate the different materials as much as possible. This approach should make it easier to extract it during recycling. An important point, because it is a real industrial puzzle which is still progressing rather slowly. They also plan to use bioplastics on a massive scale, particularly in the chassis and PCBs.
And this design philosophy is not just about industry. By placing sustainable development at the center of priorities even in the design of the machine itself, Dell is also addressing the consumer directly. On its Luna prototypes, Dell explains that it has paid particular attention to internal organization. This is particularly the case for the location of components in the chassis; they wish to make the CPU, RAM and so on not only accessible, repairable and replaceable, but also that they are with a minimum effort.
As it stands, Luna is still only a concept. But Dell believes that if all of these ideas were implemented, they could significantly reduce the carbon footprint associated with these devices. In any case, from the point of view of the consumer, it is a speech which is pleasant to hear; it is always very pleasant to see manufacturers talking about internal organization, component-level design and repairability. There is something to be enthusiastic about; we sincerely hope that it is not not just greenwashing, and that Dell will really give itself the means to push this concept to the limit.
