Greener, and More Useful, Gadgets

Yesterday Peter Troast, Energy Circle's founder, blogged about the winner of this year's Core 77 Greener Gadgets design competition.  The Tweet-a-Watt, as it's called, took the cake this weekend.  It's a great product that lets you broadcast your home energy use via Twitter, using an already great product called a Kill-a-Watt that measures the energy usage of a single electronic device.  The Tweet-a-Watt's blue ribbon emphasizes the much-blogged-about importance of measurement as a first step toward greater energy efficiency.   What makes it unique is its attempt to harness that great American spirit of competition to increase the effectiveness of measurement devices.  Transparency generally leads us to make wiser decisions, and reducing personal energy consumption can by any measure be regarded as a wiser decision.

Contrary to that great American competitive spirit is my reaction to the other finalists in the competition: like some sort of sissy or commy, I wish they all could have won.  My reasons, though, are more practical than sentimental.  As we've mentioned elsewhere, buildings account for some 40% of the energy used in the U.S.; and, as noted on EcoGeek's blog on the same subject, what's striking about the competition's final four entries is that they're all devices designed to save energy, which I think signifies a significant shift in popular attitudes as to what exactly is "green."  There were some brilliant entries born of ideas about alternative energy sources - a rocking chair that powers a reading light, for example, and a bicycle helmet that recharges batteries.  But reflected both in the comments on these inventions and in the final vote is an appreciation of the fact that the energy used to manufacture said devices might outweigh the potential benefits.

So the final four: 1) the Power-Hog, an ingenious gadget that requires kids to put money into a piggy bank before they can use an electronic device to increase their awareness of how much energy a device uses; 2) an indoor drying rack: not a particularly novel concept, but a well-designed variation of an old product, nobly bringing it back into the realm of economic and social relevance; 3) the Laundry POD , an electricity-less washing machine for small loads, just brilliant; and 4) the Tweet-a-Watt. No space-age technology, nothing crazy.  Just four really simple, usable products designed to cut home energy use. Right on.