Neuber Lightweight Solar Panel Bags

Konarka Industries have partnered with German retailer Neuber to create lightweight Energy Sun-Bags, which are fitted with a 1.4W solar panel that can charge most portable gadgets that need a charging power supply up to 5V at 600mA. The Sun-Bags can charge the usual gadgets, such as MP3 players, cameras, phones, games consoles, etc.

The Sun Bags are claimed to be the lightest on the market, weighing only 500 grams (1lb), including the solar panel, battery and all of the charging cables. The bags are available in 37 colors with optional custom printing, which is particularly useful for branding the bags with a company logo.

Prices start at around €120, which is currently around $180 USD due to currency fluctuations.

Eco 7 – Compact Transportable Bike with Folding Wheels

The Eco 7 Folding Bike is the concept design of Victor Aleman in Mexico. The Eco 7 is designed to be taken on planes and other transportation where space is a significant problem. Once you reach you destination, you unfold your bike and enjoy the great outdoors!

Pretty much every part of the bike is collapsible, including the main frame, the handle bars, crank, brakes, wheels and chain! Once the different elements have been removed from the frame, they all just fold together. The wheels are particularly clever, made from a total of 6 modules where the spokes fold into the rim of the wheel.

No mention of a prototype is mentioned, so I have no idea how long it would take to assemble and disassemble the bike in practice. I have a feeling that it would take around 15 minutes to take the bike apart. My only concern is that the bike might fall apart if one element of the bike was a little loose. That could be painful if a wheel gave way!

Eco Button PC Energy Saving Device

The Eco Button is a retro-fit device that you plug into your PC’s USB port that makes it quick and easy to put your computer into an energy saving mode. The button is designed to suspend your computer when you disappear to answer the phone, have some lunch, go to meetings, etc. When you return to your PC, just hit the button to quickly wake the computer up again, right where you left off!

The EcoButton triggers the most eco-friendly energy saving mode available on a PC, which is almost equivalent to the computer being switched off completely! The main benefit of the EcoButton is that it makes it as easy as possible to use this energy saving mode, literally at the press of a button.

Based on an average sized machine of around 200 Watts, and an electricity cost of around £0.16 per kWh, and when the Eco Button is used for 4 hours per day for 1 year, savings are estimated to be around £50 per year ( about $85 USD). Which is roughly equivalent to a saving of 135kg of carbon dioxide emissions a year! The software includes a meter which calculates your actual energy savings and carbon footprint.

The EcoButton is designed to be used with a Windows 2000, Windows XP or Windows Vista 32-bit PC, as the EcoButton is not yet compatible with Apple Macs or Windows 7. The button itself measures 5.5cm (L) x 5.5cm (W) x 1.5cm (H) and sits on top of your desk in front of your PC. The idea is that the button is a constant reminder to save energy using your PC.

Go Green With Mobiles

Samsung Blue Earth

Samsung unveiled an incredible eco-friendly phone with a full solar panel installed on its back, able to generate power when exposed to the sun. Besides, for an eco gadget the Blue Earth is quite small and comfortable to use. But Samsung went on with its device, making its body from recycle water bottles, without using brominated flame retardants, beryllium and phthalates. You can use the phone's features to turn on the energy saving mode, use a CO2 calculator, as well as a pedometer. The phone's packaging is made of recycled paper.

LG Solar-Powered Phone

Another solar-powered mobile phone comes from LG. The device includes a solar-powered battery mounted into the back cover. Ten minutes of sunlight exposure allow you to talk for 10 minutes. Logically, the more you expose the phone to the sun the more talk time you get. In future the company hopes to pack its green devices into environmentally-friendly boxes, using recycled paper with cardboard that won't include laminate coating. In addition, the company wants to remove from the phone-manufacturing process such chemicals as brominated flame retardants (BFR), chlorinated flame retardants (CFR) and polyvinyl chloride (PVC) by 2010. This model also has the HFB-500 Bluetooth solar car kit that allows you to drive your car while talking on the phone without having to hold the device.

Sharp SH002 Solar Phone

This eco-friendly mobile phone provides a number of useful features like GPS and Bluetooth; besides, it's waterproof. The solar panel incorporated here requires only 30 minutes of sunlight exposure, to give you 140 minutes of standby and 2 minutes of communications. If you expose the phone to the sun for 90 minutes, you'll be able to communicate for 9 minutes or get 560 minutes of standby. The phone also has one interesting feature - Golf Mode, which unfortunately works only in Japan. It includes information on 2300 golf courses throughout the country, thus using the GPS you can get to the desired golf field.