USB Flash Drive
32GB drive with cap
Given away at conferences by the box, these are electronic waste in a plastic shell and are usually binned rather than taken to WEEE collection.
Material breakdown
2 components- ABS housing and cap14g
- Blister packaging4g
Production footprint
Per unitEstimated upstream manufacturing footprint per unit, based on resin LCA averages.
Lower-impact alternatives
- Cloud transfer instead of a driveNo object made at all.0gplastic
- Metal-bodied drive kept for yearsDurable shell, replaceable purpose.2gplastic
- Refuse promotional drivesDemand is what keeps them being made.0gplastic
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References for this item
Peer-reviewed studies and institutional reports behind the figures above.
- Degradation Rates of Plastics in the Environment ↗Chamas, A., Moon, H., Zheng, J., Qiu, Y., Tabassum, T., Jang, J. H., Abu-Omar, M., Scott, S. L. & Suh, S. (2020) · ACS Sustainable Chemistry & Engineering, 8(9), 3494–3511
Open-access review that harmonises plastic degradation studies into a specific surface degradation rate, giving half-lives from 58 years for an HDPE bottle to 1,200 years for thick HDPE pipe. Peer-reviewed basis for how our decomposition windows scale with wall thickness and format.
- Ranking environmental degradation trends of plastic marine debris based on physical properties and molecular structure ↗Min, K., Cuiffi, J. D. & Mathers, R. T. (2020) · Nature Communications, 11, 727
Ranks PE, PP, PET, PS, PVC and nylon by measured degradation susceptibility and shows that thickness, crystallinity and additives shift estimated lifetimes by one to two orders of magnitude. Backs our practice of scaling persistence by format rather than by polymer alone.
- Monitoring polymer degradation under different conditions in the marine environment ↗Beltrán-Sanahuja, A., Casado-Coy, N., Simó-Cabrera, L. & Sanz-Lázaro, C. (2020) · Environmental Pollution, 259, 113836
Field study exposing PET, LDPE, HDPE, PP and PS in seawater, sediment and beach sand for nine months; conventional polymers lost under a few percent of their mass. Direct measured evidence for the very slow marine degradation behind our long persistence windows.
- Alteration and progressive degradation of plastic waste in a Polish operational landfill analysed over 60 years ↗Redko, V., Wolska, L., Cieślak-Piotrowicz, A. et al. (2024) · Communications Earth & Environment, 5, 563
Excavated polyethylene bags and film buried for up to six decades in a working landfill and found only partial surface oxidation, not disappearance. Real-world confirmation that landfilled film persists far beyond the lifetimes often quoted.