Michael Dell, the chairman and CEO of Dell, announced at the Fortune Green conference that the computer company will start selling a “never before seen” eco-inspired computer with a bamboo casing later this year.

The computer will be, according to Dell, 80% smaller than an average desktop computer. It will also contain recycled materials from plastic bottles and use 71% less energy than the average desktop computer.

The price tag is expected to land somewhere between $500 and $700. A name for the computer has not yet been decided on.

Image and Source credit: Earth2Tech

This year Dell, the computer maker, will be 100% carbon neutral. They will become carbon neutral by buying carbon reductions. While it’s not the best way to go green it is the fastest and simplest way at the moment. You could see it as a big first step towards a more sustainable second step. One thing is for sure. Dell is trying to take the green lead in the computer world.

Michael Dell, the company’s chairman and CEO, says that “never before in the history of business have we seen such a critical need to build a worldwide community dedicated to improving the environment.” He continued by saying that “leadership starts at home, which is why we [Dell] are going carbon-neutral, but this should only be the beginning of building long-term partnerships with customers, stakeholders and suppliers of all sizes to team up and make a difference for the Earth we all share.”

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Dell is the first PC manufacturer to achieve Energy Star 4.0 requirements with its new Inspiron 531. Some of its features are a 80% efficient power supply and a paperless owners manual. The computer is also pre-programmed to switch to a low-power sleet state after 15 minutes of inactivity.

Dell Inspiron 531 comes with an AMD Athlon-64 X2 dual-core processor, 1GB of DDR2 memory, 160GB hard drive, CD-RW/DVD-ROM combo drive, nVidia integrated graphics and Windows Vista Home Basic as operating system.

EPA, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, estimates that with the latest update of Energy Star requirements only the top 25% of energy-efficient computers will qualify Energy Star 4.0.