NTT DoCoMo, Inc. has decided to use vegetable resin in commercial mobile phone handsets, starting with the premini-IIS from Sony Ericsson Mobile Communication Japan, Inc. The handset uses plastic with corn-based polylactide as its major component in only one button.
The vegetable resin is used in a button that changes the shooting mode of the built-in camera module from normal to close-up. The button is located on the right side surface of the handset. This button was chosen "because it is not used very frequently," according to NTT DoCoMo`s spokesperson.
In April 2005, the two companies made a prototype mobile phone handset adopting corn-based polylactide plastic, using the PDC terminal mova SO506iC as a base model. Although the prototype was not commercialized, 22g of vegetable resin was used out of the total mass of 140g.
Hiroto Kaneko, Nikkei Electronics
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