Green Gadgets 2009 (Image: FastCompany)
Awareness and Communication were some of the key themes making themselves felt in this year’s Greener Gadgets conference in New York (27th Feb).
A device with a distinct focus on these themes was the Bware Water Meter, which won the ‘unofficial online vote‘ in the conference’s design competition.
Designed by Ariel Drach (Israel), this device help will help us keep track of how much water we use for any one task. It simply attaches to any tap or shower and draws power from the flow of water, genius! The ‘Advanced’ kit will even include wifi capabilities to make tracking our own ‘Water Footprint‘ the easiest thing.
Ariel hopes that this device will motivate us to improve on our water use habits from one day to another, now that it will be easy for us to figure out exactly how much water we are using.
Another device that incorporates the idea of awareness and communication is the real winner of the Design Competition, the Tweet-a-Watt. This device designed by Limor Fried and Phillip Torrone (US) is to Electricity what the Bware is to Water, and takes it one step further.
Tweet-a-Watt
Building on the idea of Peer Pressure and our desire to ‘Impress our Friends‘, the Tweet-a-Watt not only tracks your power usage but with wifi, Tweets updates of your power use to your Twitter account!
Now how many of us can’t wait to get a call from friends going, “Hey! Congratulations! Saw your Tweet the other day about how you’ve met your Energy reduction targets! Good on ya!“
It does not stop there though, from an Environmental Traffic Light to a Power Piggy Bank, these innovations have such potential that one cannot help but be optimistic about the ‘Green Future’. Check them all out on the Greener Gadgets’ Design Competition Page. (and I will be sure to blog the result of my attempt to add them to my Amazon wish list!)
Link: Greener Gadgets, FastCompany, Inhabitat
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