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.
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.
