“Bright Green” eco-blog Treehugger has a great article on 7 Concept Gadgets We Want to See Brought to Market, in which they cover some of the gadget ideas they think could improve sustainability and eco-friendliness if they made it to consumers. Several of these were finalists in the Greener Gadgets 2009 Design Competition.
My very favorite device is the bizarre “green printer” (shown here) that uses coffee grounds or old tea leaves for ink — and requires you to pump the cartridge back and forth as you print. It requires no electric power, and makes your documents smell like coffee or tea.
Another cool gadget is a blooming-flower energy monitor that provides a visual reference of how much energy your house is using. It’s designed to plug into an eco-house’s energy-consumption “dashboard.” When energy consumption is low, the flower blooms; if you’re leaving the lights on, the flower starts to wither. There’s also a clip-on Urban Air Quality Monitor, and a “solar tree” that holds solar panels and points them toward the sun throughout the day to get maximum energy exposure.
Check out the whole list here, and don’t bother saving those coffee grounds yet — none of these products are anywhere near market… we just wish they were.
Image from Core 77.