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This past February, the Greener Gadgets conference took place in New York City. The conference is produced by the Consumer Electronics Association and is meant to highlight the latest innovations and issues in green technology. I’ve never been to the conference but I do enjoy reading about one part which is the Greener Gadgets Design Competition. This year, there were eighteen finalists, whose entries ranged from kinetic chargers to smart grid-like home management devices. The winner of the competition was decided during the conference on February 25th by a panel of judges and a live audience.
This year’s winner was the AUG/Living Goods Program, a mobile application designed to encourage purchase of local goods by providing immediate information about the producer of the goods to the consumer. The application relies on the maintenance of a product database whose entries would be looked up by the bar code. Information that would be stored are items such as: distance that the product has traveled, whether the item is in season, and producer profiles. The designers’ goal is to reward local producers by empowering consumers with the information they need to make informed buying decisions.
There were several other entries which garnered attention:
- Roller Gen: a kinetic charger which converts the energy generated by riding a bicycle to charge a battery, which can then be used to charge your cell phone.
- Corky: a wireless mouse that charges up from the movement of the mouse itself!
- Automan 500 subwoofer: a home A/V subwoofer made from recycled tires, designed to look like a stylish ottoman.
- BioCharger180 & Fair Energy Clock: These are two device chargers that save energy by stopping the charging activity at a preset time.
There are several innovative entries that are fun to read about, so I encourage anyone to head over to the Greener Gadgets site to check them out.
After my previous post on waste-water heat reclamation, I’ve been a little more conscious of all the energy that I’m losing down the drain. So today, while taking a shower, I put the stopper in the drain. My reasoning was that I could heat my toes a little before letting the water go. Much to my surprise, the amount of water that I used in the shower was almost the same amount that I might have used while taking a bath. I could have sworn that taking a shower was more the more eco-friendly option, but it just goes to show that mindfulness is key when you are trying to save. So now seems like an appropriate time to review some tips and gadgets to help conserve water in the shower:
1. Install a low-flow shower head. This means the shower head will pass 2.5 gallons per minute (gpm) or less. Some models will go as low as 1 or 1.5 gpm.
- Companies like Evolve make a line of low-flow shower heads, ranging from handheld to rain to standard styles. Their ShowerStart heads actually cut off water flow once the water temperature reaches 95 degrees, so that you don’t waste water while waiting outside for the water to heat up. Once you get in the shower, just flip a valve to restore water flow.
- Install a cut-off valve. This will allow you to take a “navy shower” by controlling the flow of water without adjusting the temperature. Once wet, you reduce water and lather up, turning the flow back up to rinse off.
2. Reduce the amount of time spent showering. A complete shower can take place in 5 minutes (or less), but any reduction in time will save you water and money:
- At $111, the Shower Manager seems pricey but it does have some features worth noting such as: limited access to timer controls, options for time limit settings, reduction of water flow once time limit expires, 5-minute delay after water shut-off before resuming normal flow. The goal is to train people to take shorter showers by removing incentives, such as water pressure.
- For those of us with more self-control (or cooperative families), a simple kitchen timer would suffice. Timers made specifically for the shower range from products like the Niagara Shower Coach, a basic 5-minute sand timer which you can attach with a suction cup, to the Efergy Shower Time, a digital timer that also calculates water usage.
3. And of course, you can always turn down the temperature of your water heater.
Please note, I don’t work for any of the companies or manufacturers of any of these products. I have posted the links to give you a better idea of what options are available. So good luck and happy hunting!
The 2010 Vancouver Olympics will be starting soon on February 12th, and though the Olympic Cauldron hasn’t yet been lit, there are still a lot of interesting things going on! This year’s Olympic organizers appear to have put a great deal of thought into improving the sustainability of the event. From partnering with indigenous peoples to attempting to neutralize the Olympic carbon footprint, organizers have made numerous efforts to green up which you can read about on their Sustainability web page.
One aspect of the operations that I find fascinating, has been the work done to reuse otherwise wasted heat energy. Several of the sporting arenas and the Olympic village are setup with heat reclamation systems. For example, at Riley-Hillcrest-Nat Bailey Stadium Parks the waste heat generated by the curling rink refrigeration plant will be used to heat pool water and space at the nearby aquatics center.
Now several of you may be wondering what good this information does the average person. Not many of us have the budget of a Host Olympic City to spend on sustainability projects. It turns out that it is quite possible to reclaim wasted water heat in the home. Here are a few facts from the U.S. Department of Energy’s website on Drain Water Heat Recovery:
- Between 80-90% of the energy used to heat water in the home, goes down the drain with the water.
- Drain water heat recovery systems can capture that energy and use it to pre-heat cold water before it goes to your water heater or other appliance.
- Heat recovery systems cost between $300 – $500, not including installation but will pay off between 2.5 – 7 years pending use.
So how do these heat recovery systems work? The core concept is simple and relies on heat exchange. Using a shower as an example, a heat recovery system could work as such:
- Heated water from the hot water tank gets sent up a pipe to the shower.
- As the person showers, the still hot waste water goes down the drain pipe.
- Normally cold water would be piped into the water heater to replenish the hot water supply. However, in a heat recovery system, the inbound cold water is sent through a pipe that makes multiple curls around the drainage pipe along the way.
- The heat of the outbound shower water is transferred to the incoming cold water. Usually these sections of the system are made with copper pipe to assist in the heat transfer.
- After going through the heat transfer, the inbound water has been pre-warmed before entering the water heater. This action reduces the amount of energy it will take the water heater to perform its job.
The system I’ve just described is basic and is only useful when doing something that uses hot and cold water at the same time. However, more advanced systems allow the capability to store the recovered heat for later use. It is an exciting idea for improving energy efficiency that has yet to become popular in the United States, though it appears to be doing quite well in Canada. So if you are considering some home renovations to improve efficiency or making changes to your plumbing, ask your contractor if they can perform this kind of work.
And next month, as you are happily watching the Olympics, just keep in mind that there’s a lot of green going on behind the scenes.
I’d like to apologize for the lack of updates as I’m afraid I took the holiday vacation to heart and it took reading some of the latest gadgetry news from CES to get me back in the game. As you may have noticed from the previous posting, the 2010 International Consumer Electronics Show took place from January 7th to the 10th.
There appears to have been some interesting stuff at CES this year, including the Pocket Radar (which is a lot like it sounds) and the Eye-Fi, a wireless SD card for use with digital cameras. On the environmentally conscious front were two prominent products: the Picowatt and the Airnergy.
- The Picowatt won its manufacturer, Tenrehte Technologies, an award for “Best of CES” this year. Tenrehte was founded in 2009 and specializes in Wi-Fi enabled platforms. The Picowatt is a Wi-Fi enabled Smart Plug that allows home owners to monitor and manage the electricity use of devices connected to the plug. The device information is accessible via webpage or a Facebook app which will display current and historical electrical usage, as well as allow the user to control power to the device. The Picowatt is stated to be available to consumers in April for $79. Your can read our previous post on SmartGrids for more information about Smart energy management.
- The Airnergy is the latest effort in the arena of “free energy” battery rechargers, such as kinetic chargers and solar powered chargers. In this case, the Airnergy draws its power from Wi-Fi signals and charges devices through a USB port. This product raises some interesting questions in terms of how much and how quickly the Airnergy can build up charge from Wi-Fi signals since the amount will vary based on proximity to the wireless source, and how is this going to impact the free Wi-Fi offered by eateries and tea houses? The product is made by RCA and is expected to be available this year for $40.
That’s just a little news from the 2010 CES. Coming up next month is the Greener Gadgets Conference on February 25th!
 
Happy Holidays everyone. Hopefully you’ve gotten your shopping out of the way, and if not then you have my condolences. Now, on to some news. It looks like there are going to be two green events coming up in the next few months.
The first is the 2010 International Consumer Electronics Show (CES) being held in Las Vegas from January 7th to the 10th. There are two aspects of the CES that make it of interest here:
- Organizers have been attempting to make the show more environmentally friendly through use of recycled materials such as carpeting and paper products. They’re offering food containers and utensils made of bio-degradable materials, and they’re recycling a large percentage of the trash generated by the event. It is a pretty impressive list of actions that you can read about here at CES Greening.
- Sustainable Planet Spotlight: This will be a feature of more than thirty exhibitors in the area of green technology. Organizers say it will be the largest showing of this type that they have ever had at CES. There will be displays, presentations, and product demos which you can read more about here. Sadly, I’m not going, so I’ll have to wait until after the event to see what innovations get revealed.
The other event of interest is the Greener Gadgets Conference being held in New York City on February 25th. While being smaller than CES, it still promises to be interesting with panels on Green Living and guest speakers such as Jeff Omelchuck from the Green Electronics Council. One of the highlights of the event will be the Green Gadgets Design competition which will be accepting entries until December 31st, 2009. Last year’s winners can be seen here. I’ll be the first to admit that I’ve made fun of some of these items before, such as the Standby Monster, but its still interesting to see people attempt to tackle the issues of how to make greener living easier.
One interesting fact is that both events are being produced by the Consumer Electronics Association who, in an attempt to encourage re-use, have offered a discount shipping rate for any booths that happen to be exhibiting at both events.
So let’s keep our eyes out for some green innovation in 2010!
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