Earth Day Green Tips – Energy Saving Gadgets
Earth Day is only eight days away, so we contacted our friends at Ideal Bite to see if they had some tips to share. For those of you who aren’t familiar with them, Ideal Bite offers light green living tips for real people who lead busy lives and want to make small changes that add up to big results. (In other words it’s for all of us who don’t have the time or the energy to reduce their carbon footprint to zero.) Their Daily Tips cover everything from energy saving gadgets to eco-pet products to saving money at the gas pump. In addition to their general Daily Tips newsletter, they also offer newsletters for eco-living in San Francisco, Los Angeles, Chicago and New York City.
Here’s one of my favorite Ideal Bite tips from a couple of months ago – Energy Saving Gadgets. The Trevor Baylis Eco Media Player sounds especially sweet. Anyone out there have one yet?
What’s underneath your trench coat?
Besides your birthday suit. Answer: gizmos that put Inspector Gadget to shame. Here are our energy-saving, waste-reducing green gadget picks. Now go-go gadget eco-tip!
The Benefits
- Getting a clue about sustainability. Geeks (including girl geeks) love being on the cutting edge – and green technology that combines recycled and sustainable materials with usefulness is the newest wave of gadgetry.
- Wowsers! These contraptions won over the gizmo-nerds on the Bite team.
Personally Speaking
Brett, who bikes to work on his tricked-out Surly Karate Monkey (even through the MT snow), mounted a HYmini on his bike and uses it to charge his cell phone.
- HYmini – a portable charger for your cell or mp3 player that powers up using solar and/or wind energy ($50). (ThinkGeek has the HYmini for $49.95 and don’t forget to use coupons).
- Trevor Baylis Eco Media Player – video and MP3 player, radio, flashlight, and cell-phone charger all in one wind-up gadget (£130/$259).
- Vers iPod Dock – 15-watt speaker with remote that amplifies music from your iPod or iPhone; made using sustainable wood and packaged in recycled materials ($150).
- USBCell AA Batteries – batteries you can recharge hundreds of times using your computer’s USB ports ($17.50/2).
- Dynamo Illuminator Flashlight – get a forearm workout and a lotta light with this wind-up flashlight ($7.50).
- Make – DIY instructions for making everything from furniture to an LED bike helmet.
Mini HyMINI Review
I have a HyMINI wind-powered charger that usually doubles as an LED bike light when I’m getting around San Francisco at night. It’s lighter than it looks, and charges up even when I’m not biking fast as the, uh, wind. I love the efficiency of the gadget, and, last but not least, it works great as a conversation piece when you’re parking your bike and wanna chat up the cute biker chaining up their bike next to you.
-Toshio…off to ride like the wind…
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6 Comments
Angrynight
April 16th, 2008
at 9:57am
I don’t know, much as I am for greeness, talking about doing what you can because you’re too busy seems to suggest that it’s the thought that counts, and I think the kinds of people most likely to go to Ideal Bite are also the kinds of people who are reducing their carbon footprint already. I want to see something that would encourage the apathetic. Then again I suppose I’m just complaining that you’re offering up an orange when I feel like an apple.
szymon T
April 20th, 2008
at 10:36am
i know that global warming is here and its destroying the world. don’t you think its a little to late to help. one more thing one of being oddly good to the planet that will not help the planet to forget the centuries of shit that we have dumbed on it, into it, as well as over it. this one day will not make a polluted planet into a clean place. just as a car if you were destroying it for years and then one day it doesn’t start but you really need it. so you start saying good things to t\it so it starts, i do not not think that would help it start and become as new. now tou might know what i am trying to say.
thanks for your time
Lalry Dufor
April 21st, 2008
at 11:11pm
I’m going to fire up the old SUV and drive 600 miles on earth day.
Jim in Virginia
April 22nd, 2008
at 3:45am
Celebrities, pols, and rock stars jetting around the world to attend ‘green events’ and giving ‘green speeches’. Al Gore residing in a mansion using up 10x what the average homeowner uses in electricity (and no, I don’t care about his remodeling efforts or his buying of ‘carbon offsets’ – a really great scam I wish I had thought of). Local governments around the country illuminating millions of acres of our cities 8-10 hours a day.
And you want me to spend $50 to save a handful of miliwatts charging my cell phone?
You all need to wake up and worry about something else – like terrorists. Gee, I wonder if all the great folks over at al-Qa’ida are going green this year, too?
ThinkGeek Clearance ~ Chris Pirillo
September 16th, 2008
at 3:23pm
[...] items at ThinkGeek. One of the clearance items is the HYmini Portable Power Generator that I wrote about back in April. Now it’s only $34.99 and you can save another $10 by using this [...]
ThinkGeek Clearance ~ Chris Pirillo
September 16th, 2008
at 3:23pm
[...] items at ThinkGeek. One of the clearance items is the HYmini Portable Power Generator that I wrote about back in April. Now it’s only $34.99 and you can save another $10 by using this [...]