Recharging your gadgets

Wherever I lay my hat, thats my phone

Did you know that it is quite possible by 2010 that the biggest users of electricity in our homes will be the gadget (see www.tinyurl.com/2010gadgets ) and everything from mobile phones to lap tops to MP3 players do, of course, need energy. Now somethings, like wind up radios and torches are pretty energy efficient, just neededing  a tiny bit of human effort.  But every thing else either needs mains poweer or a battery. We throw 600 million batteries away every year – nasty toxic things – so rechargable reusable AA batteries are a simple and far eco-friendlier solution. You can even get rechargable bateries which plug into your USB port on a laptop – very funky. But even these batteries still need energy and in gadget land everything else needs power – and massive amounts of it when its ball added together. So, what is the greenest way to recharge gadgets? Well firstly try and get a gadget with low energy use – they vary dramatically – and you can compare mobile phone charger efficiency for example at www.tinyurl.com/mobchargers. There are ‘eco friendly’ chargers too for mobiles  – wind powered and solar powered (Solio, Freeloader, Solar Monkey)  so have a look at them too – at the Glastonbury Fetsival last year a number of living pods came with a built in eco-mobile charger. With laptops make sure you look for a lap top with a long lasting battery – and even when it is finished – try and recycle the battery – rechargable batteries in Nokias and Macbooks can be recycled. New fuel cells might be the future and the recently developed new generfation of silver zinc latop batteries might be a green solution – but in tne meantime that old mantra – reduce – reuse – recycle – still holds true in gadget land. Switch of a gadget or charger when not in use – reuse batteries – and recycle what you cant reuse.