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As it continues to work on a turnaround, Dell on Monday announced that it has named a former General Electric executive to serve as its new chief financial officer.

Brian Gladden, who had nearly 20 years of finance and management experience at GE, will join the computer maker Tuesday as a senior vice president, assuming the role of chief financial officer on June 13. Gladden is coming from Sabic Innovative Plastics, a GE Plastics spin-off where he has been serving as chief executive. Sabic is a unit of Saudi Basic Industries.

Prior to joining Sabic, Gladden held such posts as CFO of both GE Plastics and GE Medical Systems Healthcare IT.

"We look forward to welcoming Brian as an operationally focused CFO whose skills in running multibillion-dollar enterprises, and substantial experience with an industry leader, make him an ideal fit for the global economies in which we operate," Michael Dell, chief executive of Dell, said in a statement.

Gladden is replacing Donald Carty, who is stepping down after roughly 15 months on the job.

Carty, who will remain a Dell director, took over the CFO position in January 2007, as the computer maker tried to address a Securities and Exchange Commission investigation into its accounting practices.

Carty, who was on Dell's board at the time of his CFO appointment, had been serving on the board's audit committee, which initiated its own investigation into the company's accounting practices.

"Don has played a key role in re-establishing transparency and integrity in our financial practices, and we are extremely grateful to have had his leadership," Michael Dell, chief executive, said in a statement.

DAVIS, Calif.--It's like the Sanford and Son of green tech companies.

FiberTech Polymers takes old corrugated cardboard, plastic and other materials that don't make it to the recycler and turns it all into outdoor fencing, CEO Steven Mortensen told the audience at the GoingGreen conference taking place here this week. You can make other stuff out of it, too.

"We take this rejected material and turn it into a product," he said. "Our products will not rot, splinter or fade to gray...That's why you don't want it in landfills."

The company is actually a net consumer of waste, he added: it takes in more waste than it generates. Getting materials is not a problem--only 32 percent of waste is actually recycled, he said. It calls the process ThreeCycling. There are other garbage-to-plastic companies out there, as well as garbage-to-cement companies. Others are making plastic out of cornstarch rather than oil.

$73 billion fencing gets sold on the wholesale level a year, he added.

I'm coming to join you, Elizabeth.

You've seen picnic ware and household items made out of biodegradable plastic. Now, here's a notebook with a biodegradable chassis.

This Fujitsu LifeBook sports a chassis made from a plastic made from cornstarch rather than petroleum. It costs more, but it's green. Put the chassis in a landfill and it will go away over the course of months. Real plastic will take decades.

It's made of plastic from cornstarch.

(Credit: Michael Kanellos/CNET News.com)

Producing the cornstarch-based plastic, which comes from a supplier, also results in 15 percent less carbon emissions. Those vials (pictured at left) to the side, by the way, show the progress from corn kernels to plastic.

Fujitsu has also used the plastic on cell phones and point-of-sale terminals. The products right now are only available in Japan. Following pollution problems and the oil shock of the '70s, Japan embarked on a somewhat aggressive environmental program. Although environmentalism rises and dips, energy efficiency programs have remained somewhat strong. As a result, Japan remains one of the largest markets and producers of solar power.

You will start to see more stuff like this in the U.S. and Europe, though. The cost of bio-plastic will also decline as companies like Cereplast and agricultural bigwigs like Archer Daniels Midland expand production.

Are reusable shopping bags a thing of the future?

(Credit: Paper Nor Plastic)

Since San Francisco is banning petroleum-based, throwaway plastic bags at store checkout counters, I've wondered if clean-tech companies would rush to supply shops with a bioplastic, biodegradable, two-handle alternative. Other plasticky disposables, like forks at organic takeout eateries, are made from corn, potatoes, and other crops these days.

Alas, things fall apart, especially biodegradable bags holding anything biological (steer clear of my kitchen compost bin). There are plenty of compostable baggies for sandwiches, pooper scoopers, or yard waste. Yet after calling a bunch of bioplastic bag makers, I found that compost-ready bags in shopping-bag sizes don't seem to exist.

Instead, reusable, designer shopping totes are on the rise. Purses for pooches? So ... Read more

Braskem, a large chemical company in Brazil, has begun to produce a version of polyethylene from sugar cane in sample quantities and plans to start exporting it in industrial quantities in late 2009.

Independent firm Beta Analytic certified that the polyethylene produced by Braskem's pilot production line, which is used to make flexible packaging, does come from 100 percent renewable raw materials.

Ultimately, Braskem could produce 200,000 tons of the stuff a year.

Green plastic is becoming big business. A few U.S. start-ups such as Cereplast have produced resins for biodegradable forks and drinking cups. More recently, chemical giants have become more interested too. Archer Daniels Midland is working with start-up Metabolix on a corn-based biodegradable plastic that could go into production in the second half of 2008.

Green plastics have actually been around for years, but have been expensive compared to plastics made from fossil fuel byproducts. The price difference, however, should begin to disappear over the coming years, and green plastic goes into volume production as petroleum rises in price.

This isn't the first time, of course, that Brazil has parlayed its agricultural lands for clean technology. The country is one of the big consumers of ethanol.

Why make a shampoo bottle out of petroleum products when it can be formed out of agricultural-waste products? That's the premise behind Segetis, which today said it has raised $15 million.

The Minneapolis-based Segetis is one of a number of outfits trying to displace petroleum in household products like countertops, bottles and other items. Using organic matter cuts down on pollutants in the manufacturing process and makes recycling far more feasible.

Organic plastics have historically cost more than their petroleum counterparts, but the rising price of oil, coupled with other factors, is making organics more palatable.

Other companies in the field include Cereplast (plastic forks and paper cup liners) and Archer Daniels Midland.

Segetis says its basic chemical blocks could also be used in the production of biodiesel and other products.

The company was founded by Sergey Selifonov, who has worked for start-ups in Silicon Valley and has also conducted research at the Institute of Biochemistry and Physiology of Microorganisms, a division of the Russian Academy of Science.

Investors in the company include Khosla Ventures, which has been putting money into a wide range of green start-ups. Recently, for instance, the firm has placed a number of investments in companies specializing in developing microorganisms for converting vegetable matter into biodiesel and other products.

You can imagine all of these companies cooperating to some degree someday.