Some Green Gadgets and News

As you may or may not know, I'm really into being eco-friendly and living green.  I also happen to love gadgets and gizmos of any kind, and I know there are many people out there like me.  What are we to do to get our technology fix? Find out after the jump:



Luckily for us, there are plenty of ways we can green up our tech, and also lots of alternatives to most common items.  Sayiamgreen.com has a great post on some really cool and useful everyday items turned green, like:

- A water and lemon juice powered clock (pictured)

- Hand cranked flashlights (25 mins of use on 1 min of work!)

It's a great site and some really cool items.  Most aren't that expensive either, and are totally worth every penny.

I also came across an article on Ecofabulous about greening up existing technology.  They suggested easy things like buying a power strip for your electronics to cut down on vampire energy use.   One thing they talk about that I really like is recycling old electronics like computers and cell phones.  There's so many toxic chemicals in a phone, and millions of them just get tossed in landfills.  A lot of cell phone retailers are offering incentives to recycle phones, and some of them will take any phone (no rebates for brands not their own though), just so it gets recycled.

Some interesting eco-friendly sites/news.....

- I found a great carbon footprint calculator at The Nature Conservancy's website.  I was pretty proud, my footprint is less than half the average American's.

- Google is developing new solar technology that will slash the cost from 18 cents a kW-h to just under 5 cents.

I'm definitely looking forward to whatever Google comes up with, especially because the recession is supposed to slash solar energy research in half by 2010.  If anyone can make it work and make it affordable, it'd be Google.

- Shawn