The Green Planet Paint’s Interior Paint Collection is non-toxic with a soy-based alkyd resin and clay based pigment, zero VOC (Volatile Organic Compounds),has a matte finish and is USA made in small batches to reduce waste. You can order these paints through the Road Less Traveled Store (after picking a color from the swatches you will have to call the store by phone to order) or from finding a dealer in your area from this link. Also for more information on these paints check out the manufacturer’s website here.
Now that almost everyone is using the USB flash drives to transfer and store their files we are facing the same issue that we have with CD’s and floppies - they get thrown out eventually. Our landfills are already overflowing with electronic junk so it’s a great idea that ATP has come up with a fully recyclable USB flash drive, called the EarthDrive. What makes the EarthDrive so special is that it is made from bio-recycled materials and is completely shockproof, waterproof and dustproof. You might freak out when you see their inflated prices (Costco sells the 8 Gig drive for 60.00) but the bite out of your wallet is less painful when you hear that ATP donates a portion of all their proceeds to planting trees all around the world. (hopefully not too near the Arctic circle.)
USB Cell Price: £8.79 (approx. USD 17.49) from usbcell.com
Keep batteries out of the landfill with USB Rechargable Batteries. All you do is pop it into your computer’s USB port, and let the charging begin from power already flowing through your PC.
Why do the really cool green gadgets tend to just be prototypes or some design student’s thesis project? Seems like something like this FlowerPod should find a ready market with the sky high energy prices and increased eco awareness.
The FlowerPod is a digital flower that blossoms when it reads your home is using electricity the way you should be. But as soon as you start to disregard your usage, leaving the computers and TV’s on all day and night, your beautiful flower will wither into a dead one. You will do all you can to show you really have a green thumb…and house!
Check out the details at the GreenerGadgets competitions website
Organic Light-Emitting Diode (OLED) is the latest in screen technology that is getting ready to become the next big thing in flat-screen technology. It can be manufactured much thinner that the LCD and Plasma ones, because there is no need for the heavy duty backlighting. And the screen produces a clearer, truer image in the process. Plus, it uses a lot less electricity to run so that can be a good thing. The bad thing, very bad perhaps, is that eventually millions of people will toss their old monitors and TVs into the vast heap of toxic electronic waste flood that we already have.
Despite our best efforts Mosquitoes resist our efforts to do them in. They return every year to bug us and also to transmit serious disease. This will undoubtedly worsen as Global Warming heats up.
Bug Zappers, especially the “eco-friendly” solar powered ones, might seem like a good way to protect your back yard from these pests, the satisfying pop and crackle while meeting their doom seems worth the price alone. But studies have shown they are rarely effective against mosquitoes, of bugs killed maybe 4% tend to be mosquitoes. Mostly, it kills beneficial moths, beetles and other bugs who may actually eat other harmful insects. These bug zappers not only kill off good insects but may contribute to ruining an important food source for songbirds. So, in other words, they are a total rip-off.
So what is the best Green solution to mosquitoes? Mainstream repellents containing DEET diethyl-meta-toluamide tends to be the standard of effective repellent but many people are understandably wary of putting this chemical stew on their skin. One site, Journey to Forever.org,
gives a great recipe for Handmade Organic Mosquito Repellent (HOMeR), that they claim is a very effective means to naturally repel mosquitoes using lemon grass. Another natural repellent that you can buy is oil of lemon-eucalyptus, sold as Repel. Here is a great site, Mosquito.org which has a wealth of info on all things mosquito. Finally, Ecogreentips.com has some good info on some helpful solutions to the mosquito problems for you and your back yard.
The Phonophone II is not only a wonderfully designed object but also a great device that can transform your iPod’s earplugs into a mini-amplified speaker - without having to plug it in, insert batteries or sit waiting for the sun. All you have to do is hook up your iPod earphones to the adapter, and natural science will do the rest. The horned shape of the ceramic phonophone will capture and emit the music throughout the room (as long as the room is pretty small and no other competing sounds anyway)
We applaud the desire to save electricity but in this case the amount of power it takes to run an amplifier and speaker is extremely low, so the real appeal is its novelty and coolness factor. For me, at $500 there are quite a few items higher up on my coolness generating gadget wish list. But for the person who has everything or for rich iPod fanatics this might be a great addition to their desk. Then you can start looking for a tiny ceramic Jack Russell dog to sit listening next to it.
SUNWHISPER/24 SOLAR POWERED MULCHING LAWNMOWER $695.00 from Freepowersys.com
Gasoline lawn mowers are slowly on their way out. Not only are they loud and obnoxious but are also a significant source of air pollution. According to one study, cutting grass for an hour with a gasoline powered lawn mower is about the same as that from a 100-mile automobile ride. The 50 or so million people mowing their lawns each weekend in the US with gas-powered mowers can contribute as much as five percent of the nation’s air pollution, according to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. It would be great if everyone would come to their senses and get rid of their gas-powered mowers today in favor of a push mower, which is the ultimate in green mowers, which not only doesn’t pollute but also gets folks to exercise more.
Sadly, we may have a bit of a wait before that happens. However, many of the new electric mowers are not only significantly less polluting but are about the same pricing as a good gas-powered mower. Better still, check out the solar powered electric mower from Freepowersys, their sunwhisper model, which is in essence a cordless electric Black & Decker mower modified with a small solar array to turn sunlight into power. It is claimed to be easy to use and set up, is quiet, can use anytime of day, has a rear bagger for mulching lawn clippings and best of all uses solar power.
If you are inventive and good with tools you can convert one of these rechargeable electric or even a gas powered mowers to solar power on your own. Here is a good link that can explain how.
Here is another link that explains how someone converted their electric mower to solar - also here a link to a video by the same person that goes into great detail. Finally, we wrote an article last summer on green lawn mowing that is worth a peek.
If you spend all day spelunking in some deep cave and never see daylight this LED headlamp may not be your best choice as you need to recharge the solar cells for at least 2 hour in full sunlight to get 6 hours of full brightness. But for the rest of us it seems like a great source of light that doesn’t require batteries that you can use camping, hiking, or emergencies. It could even work for spelunking but considering how fragile most caves eco-systems are it is probably better from an environmental view to do some urban exploring instead.
For an extra $12.00 You can also get optional charging devices that will allow you to charge you cellphone or iPod.
The new web browser Flock’s Eco-Edition offers interesting possibilities in Green Computing.
It is a free browser that focused on helping people connect, share and explore contemporary websites that have a community emphasis. The Flock Eco-Edition browser comes pre-loaded with carefully selected green content from a variety of sources such as Grist, Ecorazzi, Treehugger, PlanetGreen, National Geographic, Sprig, Environmental News Network and many more. They offer daily updated environmental news, interviews, video, and other rich media. If you find something that is particularly useful, interesting or disturbing you can share it with a built in Flock sidebar that connects your friends from Facebook, Flicker, You Tube and other such sites.
The Flock 2.0 Beta version is built on the Firefox 3.0 browser and takes advantage of the various performance and security enhancement improvements offered by Firefox 3.0
In the Eco-Edition - the Flock people state that “Flock believes in providing users who download the Flock Eco-Edition a means to give back by donating 10% of search proceeds to the environmental charity of choice, as deemed by the voting of the community of Flock’s Eco-Edition users at the end of this year. Flock makes money when people search through the browser. So the more you search via Flock Eco-Edition, the more we’re committing to give back.”
Maybe they are just painting one of their “editions” Green so as to persuade people into switching to their browser but the fact they are promoting Green causes and giving some of their money back to environmental causes can’t be a bad thing. Might be worth giving them an investigation.
