Source:  www.guardian.co.uk

If we were stuck on a desert island with only one book, this recently unveiled solar e-book would be at the top of our list. Designed by LG Display, the sleek reader features a wafer-fin photovoltaic cell that provides it with a steady stream of solar energy. Whereas most e-books run the risk of losing juice mid-sentence through your next novel, this solar reader’s omnipresent energy source makes it a winning design in our book.

At first glance e-readers offer a great set of benefits over paper-bound books – they’re light, versatile, and a great alternative to lugging around a tote full of dead tree tomes on your next trip. The rise of e-readers also stands to stem the environmental repercussions of the publishing industry, as books can be released online rather than incurring the energy, materials, and cost that it takes to manufacture, print, and ship them across great distances. However these new reading mediums have one glaring fault – can you imaging the frustration of running out of juice mid-sentence and halfway through Infinite Jest?

LG’s new solar e-book aims to address this issue by harnessing the sun’s rays to power its display. The device features a 10 centimeter wide thin-film panel that is .7mm thin – the width of a credit card. Energy efficiency is a strong concern with portable readers, and it looks like LG may have hit on a winning feature set with their e-book – 4-5 hours spent sitting in the sun will provide a full day’s worth of reading time.

Ki Yong Kim, head of the Solar Cell Office at LG Display has stated that “ebooks are attracting a lot of attention because they offer the advantage of storing thousands of books’ worth of contents in an easy-to-carry device. The idea of ebook combined with solar cell will offer users the added benefit of longer usage. We will continue to provide users with enhanced convenience and value to solidify our lead in next-generation, environmentally friendly products.”

Source:  www.ecoshop.com.au

No batteries needed- simply unscrew the “antenna” and fill with ordinary tap water, wait for a few minutes and the calculater will become usable.  The calculater will only need topping up on average once a month, and offers a full ranger of functions.

The patented technology simulates a basic battery concept where two electrodes consisting of specially formulated alloys, one positive the other negative, are immersed in water. As soon as water comes in contact with both electrodes an electrochemical reaction takes place resulting in the production of electrical energy.

Source:  http://www.freakitude.com

It appears that not only is coffee good to the last drop, but the dregs are now good for printing a document. Yes, someone has actually invented a printer that uses old coffee grounds as ink, and to make it even more interesting, the printer does not even require electricity. This coffee and manually powered printer was not entirely the product of pure inspiration. The RITI printer is designed by Joen Hwan Ju, and it has generated a lot of buzz in the gadget world.

In case you haven’t heard how the RITI printer works, you have to place the remnants of your wet and dirty coffee filter inside an ink cartridge with some water. Insert a piece of paper, and then you manually move the cartridge back and forth and it will mark up the paper. Using your own kinetic energy to power the process also means no electricity is needed, and you have all that coffee induced energy to burn anyway. Once complete, you empty the cartridge, meaning your coffee leftovers can continue their journey to the compost bin. But if speed is your need for printing, I may not suggest this product as my guess would be that the manual operation of the printer would be a fast process.

In all honesty, a late-eighties dot matrix printer would probably do a speedier job. However, your documents wouldn’t smell as mountain-fresh afterward. It might not be a the solution for full color print jobs, but its an ingenious recycling idea, and one we’d love to see make it to market.

Source:  http://crave.cnet.co.uk

You’ve switched your bathroom lighting to energy-savers, fitted a low flow tap and adopted an organic shaving gel. But how do you keep upping the green grooming ante? Enter, stage right, a wind-up electric shaver called the Powerplus Piranha Dyanmo.

Following in the shadow of crank-powered bike lights, the shaver recharges its internal battery as you wind it up. One minute of winding results in one minute and twenty seconds of shaving. You can also juice it to full in eight hours from the mains and it has a max 60 minute battery life.

While clearly less eco than, say, a barber’s blade, the Piranha could be useful for frequent travellers, campers and any off-gridders hoping to shave their electricity consumption (ahem). My personal experience of wind-up-anythings is that you quickly get bored of winding, charge them from the mains and only use the wind-up in an emergency. But maybe I’m just lazy.

Source:  www.alternative-energy-news.info

First algae fuel-powered vehicle in the world was officially launched in San Francisco. The car, called Algaeus is a modified Toyota Prius, which derives power from green crude, from Sapphire Energy. The car runs on an astonishing 150 miles per gallon of green fuel. But they are aspiring to cross the US on approximately 25 gallons of fuel.

According to FUEL producer Rebecca Harrell, “Powering our cars with algae-based fuel could be the next Apollo mission.” Rebecca Harrell is the co-founder of the Veggie Van Organization and producer of the upcoming film FUEL. In the coming 10 days she’ll be accompanying the Fuel director and Veggie Van Organization cofounder Josh Tickell. Together they will take the Algaeus on a countrywide road trip. The duo’s other travel companions will be other green energy vehicles (including the Veggie Van and the biodiesel-powered big green energy bus), “It hit us that we needed to drive the car across the country,” Harrell said. “People think of algae fuel as this long-term, far off thing. But seeing is believing.”

This countrywide tour will serve a dual purpose. People will be aware of the new clean and green fuel and they will give publicity to their forthcoming film FUEL. This film depicts America’s dependency on foreign oil. They claim that their film is different from other environmentally-themed movies. Till now these movies raise a question mark and present us with bleak future. Those movies were usually silent about the answers to environmental hazards. FUEL tries to fill the gap here. They talk about the various methods to make the transition from oil to alternative sources of energy. What’s important for everyday people is information. People don’t say ‘Can you give me something else to be scared about?’ They say, ‘How can I get my car to run on algae fuel?’ Tickell explained. FUEL will be released in New York City, San Francisco, Berkeley, and Washington DC on September 18th.

But you can not fill your tank with algae fuel at your local gas station in the foreseeable future. But the company aims to increase production of algae-based jet fuel this year and plans production of over 2 million liters of algae based diesel fuel per year over the next two years. The car is powered by a mixture of 5% algae fuel and the manufacturers claim that the demonstration car will leave its mark as the environmentally friendly-fuel-driven automobile.

Though, it is early to conclude that we can use algae as transport fuel. We all know that five percent blend of algae doesn’t precisely indicate the initiation of an algae revolution. But as the saying goes, glass if half full too. It states that advancement is being made on the fuel with great potential. This road trip will allow people to witness the progress in action. The main point of the Algaeus is to show the capability of algae to be used in an ordinary engine.

Source:  www.envirogadget.com

The Hand-powered Windup Mobile Phone Charger is a perfect and affordable little gadget that allows you to top up your mobile phone using nothing but hand power. We’ve seen hand-powered chargers before, but this one stands out as it’s so cheap at just £5.99 (around $10) and it supports a number of mobile phones (sadly not the iPhone though).

The phone charger is really light and compact, and is able to give you 8 minutes of talk time with just 3.5 minutes of hand power (where you average at around two and a half turns per second). Counter-intuitively, it’s not the speed of cranking that determines how much talk time you get, but more the number of turns that you do. This is because the energy generated by a dynamo is directly proportional to the number of turns completed, rather than the speed of the magnet moving within the coil. However, the faster you go, the less time it will take to charge your phone!

The compatibility list includes (which is sadly a little short):

• Nokia 3210/3310/3330/8210/8250
• Motorola Star tac/cd920/930/928/V3688/V8088/V3690
• Ericsson T28/T20/T29/T39M/T39/T60/T65/T68/R320/R310/R380/R300/R520m
• Siemens C25/C35/C35i/M35/A35/A36/A40/SL45/S45/SL45i/SL42

For just £5.99, it’s a pretty neat gadget. However, I’m sure the lack of compatibility for the newest mobile phones will put people off.

Source:  www.designframeproductsllc.com

Recycled corrugated cardboard into a stylish folding chair. The Pause chair stands 18 inches tall, the same height as a standard dining room chair, yet folds to less than an inch thick. It weighs under two pounds but feels surprisingly stable and can support 250 pounds.

Source:  www.vyandelle.com

Bags from recycled billboards, which are waterproof and come in thousands of colors, and have gotten their products onto the celebrity swag circuit at recent HBO and Comedy Central events.

Source:  www.elsewares.com

Using a combination of heat and pressure, the process stretches records damaged past playing prime into bowls about four inches deep while maintaining the diameter of the original record. (Selling to a generation that came of age with LPs, Davis gets the most requests for records by the Beatles, the Rolling Stones, and the Who.)

Source: www.ethicalsuperstore.com

Finally, a solar charging solution capable of powering your most energy-sapping devices and gadgets!

Solargorilla’s 24 volt and 5 volt USB socket make it the ultimate renewable power source for your notebook/laptop, mobile phone, iPod and any other digital gadget which operates under 24 volts.

A great benefit of having two charging sockets is that the Solargorilla can charge a laptop and MP3 player or mobile phone simultaneously.

To store all of the connectors the Solargorilla comes complete with a nifty Neoprene zip case which not only looks great but will keep everything safe and sound.

All you have to do to experience this awesome power is simply open the 2 panels, expose them to sunlight, and watch the green charging indicator gain intensity as the charge increases.

As well as its heavyweight charging credentials, this latest solar charger from Powertraveller is tough and durable – allowing you to keep it with you wherever you may go. Its solid panels allow unparalleled power capabilities and ensure reliable performance.

To increase its portability and versatility, the Solargorilla has a convenient fold-up design which protects the solar panels when stored, is water resistant (apart from the connectors) – ideal for those wet days, and has a special slot allowing it to be hung from a tent or vehicle - perfect for travelling or camping!