Have you noticed that we seem to need batteries for this, batteries for that. Everything seems to need a battery! According to DEFRA (Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs), 700 million batteries end up in UK landfill annually! Most batteries contain harmful chemicals, resulting in soil and water pollution. It’s refreshing to find a...
If you want to exploit wind power, you’d normally need a monstrous wind turbine that would cost you thousands. Wind power is probably the most efficient of alternative energy sources for residential uses. Unfortunately, the cost of such a system along with the wind requirements precludes people from wanting to use it. However, this neat...
This curious lemon light exploits an old trick of creating electricity from a lemon (along with some zinc and copper metal). The device was created by artist Yuri Suzuki to highlight the wastefulness of society.
We’ve learnt a lot from nature, such as flight and medicine. Scientists in Australia have designed an innovative power generation system inspired by the shape of the tailfins of Tuna and Sharks. The currents on the ocean floor impose a force on the fin of the BioStream device. The to-and-fro motion of the fin is...
If you’re stranded in the middle of nowhere, the last thing you need is to be scrambling around for batteries so that you can radio for help. You might have a solar panel, you might even have a few AA batteries floating around. But batteries don’t last forever, and solar powered chargers take several hours...
Orange have announced the release of an eco friendly gadget prototype, a charging device that is powered by movement or “dance energy”. The concept uses a collection of magnets and coils to generate electricity from movement; the same principle used by kinetic watches. The Dance Charge has been designed with summer festival revellers in mind,...
Conventional fossil fuels costs are going through the roof at the moment all over the world. We need to find and use alternative and cheaper energy sources, particularly fuels that work with cars and other vehicles. The EFuel100 MicroFueler is essentially a home distillery that allows you to create your own ethanol supply using yeast...
This uses a water-based battery to generate enough current so that you can do your sums with the environment in mind! Just top this eco gadget up with some water and it will run for up to 3 months until the water has evaporated. Then you just need to top it up again.
This intriguing little MP3 player is recharged from either a traditional USB connection or by hand. With just 60 seconds of cranking by hand, you get up to 10 minutes of power to play the music. If you’re in the middle of nowhere without a USB power source, it’s a great way to keep your...
