bemoreeco

Are good friends at EcoTrendSpotter have been going for a year now so they have told what their top ten posts have have been.

It’s quite a random mix of eco, ethical and organic products!

1. Snake Draught Exclude
2. Rainmate Slimline Water Butt
3. Sun and Moon Jar – Free Sunlight Forever
4. Orla Kiely Wottle – reusable water bottle
5. ‘More Trees’ Green Eco T-Shirt
6. Alpaca Fair Trade Slippers
7. Handy Water Siphon Pump
8. Eco Design Wallpaper – PEONY
9. Brill Razorcut Premium 38 Eco Lawn Mower
10. Seagrass Laundry Basket

In the UK we throw out an estimated 6.7 million tonnes of household food waste every year which accounts for around a third of all the food we buy.

Approximately half of this domestic food waste is edible food which translates into a financial cost of £250 to £400 a year for every British household. In addition to the economical impact, food wastage has an enormously detrimental effect on the environment impacting on landfill and contributing to the production of greenhouse gases.

By adapting a number of simple measures such as planning when to shop for food and only making necessary purchases consumers can considerably reduce their food waste. Food storage is also an important factor and proper storage eliminates premature ageing of fruit and vegetables which in turn reduces the amount of wasted food.

The Eco Cooler is an innovative new hand made terracotta fruit bowl and root vegetable store with natural cooling properties. Water poured in the bottom plate is absorbed by the terracotta. As the water evaporates it cools, helping to create the ideal cool, damp, dark environment to store potatoes, onions, garlic, swede and other root vegetables inside. Root vegetables last longer if stored 3-4 degrees below room temperature and in an environment a little warmer than a fridge. Fruit likes to be slightly chilled, but stored in the open air and light, so Eco Cooler also has a bowl on top which cools fruit just a couple of degrees.

Another nifty gadget which can help food last longer is the Ethylene Gas Guardian (RRP £3.99) This ingenious little egg shaped device can save households money by absorbing the ethylene gas fruits and vegetables give off in the fridge thus keeping them fresher for longer.

Many fruits and vegetables, especially if they have been damaged, give off ethylene gas as they ripen. Although harmless to people, much of the fresh produce in fridges is sensitive to the presence of even very low levels of ethylene gas and the refrigerator acts as a trap allowing the ethylene to build up to damaging levels.

The easiest way to combat this and save the costs of prematurely aged produce is to declare the refrigerator an ethylene gas free zone. By keeping the ethylene gas guardian on duty in the refrigerator, a very low presence of ethylene is assured regardless of what produce is stored there and users can continue to enjoy fresh produce for longer whilst saving money at the same time.

Both the Eco Cooler(RRP £69) and the Ethylene Gas Guardian can be bought online at Ecoutlet.

I though that this ‘Dustbot’ robot was an April Fool gag, but then I realised that we are in May and therefore it must be real. Check out this video by BBC report Duncan Kennedy.

However, to summaries, the Dustbot, form Tuscany, Italy, is believed to be the world’s first robot that comes to take away rubbish from your house when you want it. The Dustbot can be summoned to your address through a mobile phone any time of the day. The robot works with a combination of GPS navigation and with a gyroscope to keep it upright. There are also a number of sensors on the machine so it does not bump into anything.

Dustbot’s inventors say they hope it will put an end to fixed times for rubbish collection and they say it is designed to work in tightly packed urban areas where large refuse trucks find it difficult to operate. A number of local authorities from around the world have already expressed an interest in it.

It took me my son’s science project on recycling to realize that we can really do something constructive out of the waste we generate from our kitchen. Before you turn up your noses and crank about the “Rotting Veggie Odors + Recycling”, let me explain the pros of the Terraviva Domestic Composter. This is a device that sits neatly on your counter top, as stylish as any other appliance that you own. It simply makes a mish-mash of all the veggie waste into something palatable for the plants.

Organic stuff like your peels and leftovers added to the composter decomposes with the help of aerobic microorganisms. These organisms just speed up the degradation process via electromechanical processes and make sure there is no stink. You will need to hook it up to a power source for around 20 minutes a day, and once its tanked up, it just keeps doing its thing. It has the capacity to process 12 liters or 7 kgs of waste at a time.
Those with kitchen gardens are really going to like this thing.

Designer: Ravel Casela

After energetic debate and a charged round of live judging we’re excited to announce the winners of the 2009 Greener Gadgets Design Competition! Hosted by the always engaging Allan Chochinov and featuring Panelists Jill Fehrenbacher, Saul Griffith, and Jeff Kapec, this year’s competition showcased a virtuosic array of innovative technologies that ra

nged from the practical to the futuristic to the patently bizarre. Many of this year’s winning designs spoke to one of the central themes of the conference - visualizing energy use.

Congratulations to our grand prize winner the Tweet-a-watt, the Powerhog for second place, the Indoor Drying Rack for third place, and the Laundry Pod for fourth, and read on for more highlights from the judging!

This year’s Greener Gadgets Design Competition challenged an international community of designers and inventors to address issues of product lifecycle, energy use, and sustainability in consumer electronics. We were thoroughly impressed with the ingenuity on display, and Allan walked us through some of the more notable entries, including the RITI Coffee Ground Printer, several Cardboard Computers, and the Environmental Traffic Light. There were also some hilarious off-the wall ideas on display, such as the piezoelectric energy-generating “Jiggly Bed”, and a literal take on the tail light, which ensures that your dog is visible once the sun sets.

After much deliberation the panel settled upon four top entries. The Power Hog was a favorite among the audience and judges alike, Tweet-A-Watt got big kudos Saul and Jill, and the Indoor Drying Rack garnered appeal among the judges for its anti-gadget utility, although the crowd was fiercely divided so the judges decided to include the Laundry Pod as well.

Then it was up to the audience to choose their favorite design, and Allan’s applause-o-meter awarded theTweet-A-Watt with the grand prize of $3000! One of the recurrent points echoed throughout the conference is that we need to be able to measure our energy use before we’re able to cut it down – an issue that the Tweet-A-Watt tackles with flying colors. This open-source power meter won big points for its novel ability to broadcast your home’s energy use through Twitter, encouraging energy conservation by publicly displaying your power consumption. It also represents an innovative diy approach to consumer electronics, and a working model can easily be constructed using readily available materials.

Congratulations to Limor Fried, Adafruit Industries, and Phillip Torrone for winning the grand prize, and all of the other teams for their fantastic entries!

Second place: Powerhog
Third place: Indoor Drying Rack
Fourth place: Laundry Pod

Source; Inhabitat

Calling all Green Gadget Geeks! The Greener Gadgets Conference is coming to NYC THIS WEEK: Friday, February 27th. Part of the Conference is the Design Competition and you can go to the site and vote for your favourite Greener Gadget and influence the results.

To help you we have listed some of our favourite gadgets below.

Consumer electronics getting greener but there’s room for improvement, says Greenpeace.

Gadget makers have a long way to go before their products can be considered truly eco-friendly, according to a new report from Greenpeace.The environmental campaign group called on the industry to “put its foot on the accelerator” and move towards a truly green manufacturing process.

Greenpeace tested 50 gadgets put forward by 15 of the exhibitors at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas to test how eco-friendly their new product ranges really were.The devices were measured on three criteria, including the use of dangerous chemicals, power consumption and recyclability.

A 24in widescreen monitor made by Lenovo was named most eco-friendly gadget, scoring 6.9 out of 10, while Acer’s Veriton computer scored lowest, with 3.3 out of 10. Among the other products, Samsung scored 5.45 out of 10 for its F268 mobile phone, while Sharp’s 52in LC-52GX5 television scored 5.92 out of 10.

Six companies – Asus, Microsoft, Nintendo, Apple, Palm and Philips – refused to take part in the survey.

“We’re pleased to say that the electronics industry has taken encouraging strides towards increasing the green features on some gadgets over the past year, but none stand out in all environmental categories,” said Casey Harrell, a Greenpeace campaigner. “The race for the green winner is still on.”

Greenpeace said that fewer electronic products contained PVC, and that hazardous chemicals were being used less often in the manufacturing process. It also noted that the flat-screen LED displays used in most modern televisions used less energy than non-LED televisions, and did not have mercury in their backlights.

It said that many manufacturers had introduced comprehensive “take-back schemes” and recycling plans in order to help consumers correctly dispose of unwanted gadgets.

“The electronics industry is heading in the right direction,” said Harrell. “To stay in the race, each company needs to put its foot on the accelerator, applying any progress it has made across all of its product lines and adopting each other’s best practices.

“We’re confident that, as part of the most innovative industry on the planet, these companies can step up to this green challenge.”

All of the large manufacturers attending CES have emphasised the eco-friendly nature of their new product ranges, highlighting the use of recyclable materials and responsible disposal programmes for unwanted gizmos. Many are promoting the energy efficiency of their televisions, home audio systems and computers, saying that reduced power consumption is good for the environment, and also leads to lower household bills.

A steady stream of attendees at the show have been looking at the wares on offer in a special section of the conference set aside for green products, such as portable fuel cells and backpacks with built-in solar panels for quick charging of mobile phones, laptops and music players.

Source: www.telegraph.co.uk

Last month we listed the nominations for Best Eco Gadget in The Vodafone Pocket-lint Gadget Awards. 

The awards, decided by the UK’s top technology and gadget journalists from online and print, let you the consumer know what the best camera, satnav, music gadget, laptop, software, video game, home cinema device, mobile phone, email device, and eco gadgets are. 

This year it was tougher than ever with the nominations drawn from over 600 products released in the last year with the usual suspects not even getting a look in on some of the categories. 

So who was the winner of the Best Eco Gadget catagory. We can confirm it was Pure for its move to more friendly green practices and packaging. The runner up was Roberts solarDAB radio. Both of these products were spotted by the Eco Trend Spotter team, well done.

Shops which Eco Gadgets can be found by <clicking here>

Many of us this Christmas will give and receive new gadgets. Some of these with be eco and some not. The question we discussed in the BeMoreEco office was what is the best process of buying gadgets this year. What should our green eco gadget shopping tips be.

Well after some searching we found these Green Gadget tips posted by Plant Green.

Here are the nominations for Best Eco Gadget in The Vodafone Pocket-lint Gadget Awards: 

- Pure Evoke Flow 

- Roberts solar DAB radio

- OneForAll energy saving remote

- Solio Magnesium Edition rechargeable solar power pack

- Ecotronics penguin torch

The Pocket-lint awards are the longest running gadget awards in the UK (that we know of) with 12 categories in total including the coveted Best Product of the Year 2008. The awards, voted by a panel of leading gadget journalists, including the staff from the Pocket-lint team, will decide the real must-have gadgets of the year, rather than those simply deemed cool or anticipated, and be the definitive guide for consumers looking to buy gifts this Christmas. 

Winners will be announced at an Awards evening in London on Thursday 6 November.  Will post the winner as soon as we know.