Hybrid Living

There’s a searing review of the EcoButton, a USB powered button that sends your computer into power-save mode, up on BoingBoing Gadgets. Guess what… that’s all it does. Why go to all the trouble of clicking the mouse three times when you can just hit an over sized button?

Even better, the Eco Button is illuminated, the better to remind you that you’re wasting more of the planet’s resources unnecessarily just by keeping it plugged into your computer’s USB port.

While it would make saving energy easier, I can’t help but wonder how much energy it would take to manufacture, advertise, package, sell, ship, and (hopefully) recycle one of these… and how long it would take to recoup the "investment". The main advantage to having one of these around would be having a constant reminder to reduce energy use. The package includes software to track how much you’re saving, so it’s a great way to learn to feel good about reducing energy use (if not consumption).

This might be a good way for companies to encourage green thinking, and save some dough while they’re at it. At my last job, they left the computers on 24/7 – as a policy – and it drove me crazy… they could be saving hundreds a year (and tons of CO2) with these in place. Going Green is as much about changing minds than saving energy, so perhaps there’s a place for these. There won’t be a place for these in twenty years, though… we’ll either have figured out how to conserve energy without oversized plastic buttons by then, or be competing over the last few drops of oil in the Thunderdome.

There’s a more friendly review on GeekSugar. Rather than pick sides, I’m going to open source my own low-power alternative – a piece of scrap paper with the words "Turn It Off and Plant a Tree" stuck to my monitor.

Can you imagine a future where your electronics are biodegradable? Xavier Petre can, and as CEO of United Pepper – an electronics company out of Belgium dedicated to making their products as earth-friendly as possible – he’s working to make that happen. Not only has his company replaced the conventional plastic casings on their webcams and USB hubs with cotton, sand and kapok (a renewable seed-pod fiber) – they are also the first electronics company on Earth to be fair-trade certified. The little creatures they make are so freakin’ awesome-looking (check out their website here) I can’t wait for them to make it to the USA!

Nokia’s employees are passionate about creating technology that has a low impact on the environment – and they came all the way from Finland to share their passion with us at the 2008 CES. While I found it odd that a booth entitled "Ecology Meets Technology" would be set up in front of a single TV reaching from the floor to the ceiling, I liked what the gentlemen there had to say about how they’ve reduced their packaging and taken toxic chemicals out of their products.

Nokia certainly has a strong environmental platform, and they made the top of the Greenpeace Guide to Greener Electronics when it first came out. They’ve slipped recently due to ease-of-use problems with their takeback practices in the Philippines, Thailand, Russia, India, and Argentina, and could stand to improve their recycling scorecard a bit, too. All told, though, they have an impressive record and it was great to meet some of the people who make it happen!

Happy to note the following about the latest Apple MacBook, dubbed the "Air":

10:32 a.m. Jobs talks about progress on environmental issue. Says Air has an all-aluminum case (recyclable), first mercury-free display, arsenic-free glass.

That new display consumes less power, too, contributing to a battery life of over 5 hours (full use with all wireless options on). With special RemoteDisc software installed, it can read optical discs from other computers (it doesn’t come with one of its own) – I’ve always thought it was bunk to have more than one DVD drive in a home, especially with Gigabit Ethernet and 802.11n networks in place – it’s only an issue if you want to rip a CD the same time someone else wants to install a new program from disc, and who uses physical media anymore? In both cases, it would probably be faster to download anyways!

Of particular interest to anyone who cares about the environment is… the bromide and PVC-free circuitboards and the fact that the packaging is 56-percent smaller [than current MacBook].

Apple pushed Intel to produce really, really tiny chips for this particular computer, and everyone benefits when Intel makes smaller chips that consume less power – you can bet this technology will find its way into Sony, Dell, and HP laptops soon enough. Also of note is the option for a 64GB SSD, though at $999 it’s no bargain.

It meets Energy Star 4.0 standards and attained a Silver EPEAT rating. Someone check my math, but 5 hours out of a 37 watt-hour lithium polymer battery would mean would mean it consumes about 7.4 watts… that’s in the same consumption category as some of the Super-Green Linux Machines we’ve been covering, and it blows everything else at it’s productivity level out of the water.

via ZDnet and Slashgear and Apple Store

As our cars and lives get ever greener, so too do the playthings of the rich and famous. Blasting past Ferrari’s aim of increasing their efficiency 40% over the next five years, Audi will be releasing a 6.0L V-12 TDI version of the R8 Roadster coupe in 2009, which will more than double the current gasser version’s mileage. Taking into account the difference in energy density between fuels (diesel has about 19% more energy than gasoline when comparing equal volumes of fuel), this still equals a 67% increase in efficiency… and the technology is available today.

Under the see-through engine cover at the rear of the lovely R8 Diesel Concept’s body is a 6-liter twin-turbocharged, twin-intercooled V-12 direct-injection diesel engine that makes 500 horsepower and 737 foot-pounds of torque. The company said the Quattro all-wheel-drive system will apportion power in such way that the extra rear-end weight won’t affect the sports coupe’s handling.

With a couple hundred ft-lbs of torque more than any car in similar horsepower range, you can bet that this monster will zip off the line. Of course, the heavier engine will put a little bit of a damper on the acceleration, but preliminary tests estimate a 4.2 second 0-60. While certainly far from where we need to be in terms of efficiency, it is a step forward, which is commendable. Still, for the money – the car’s MSRP will likely be over $135,000 – you could get yourself a Tesla Roadster (which boasts 100+ MPG equivalent and a 4.0 second 0-60 time) and still have enough money left over to buy a Chevy Volt when they come out in 2010.

via New York Times

It looks like the march of obsolescence may soon put HD-DVD movies in the box at your next garage sale along with your old BetaMax tapes, 8-tracks, Laserdiscs and cassettes (you do save your precious vinyl, don’t you?). Now that Warner has established itself firmly in the Blu-Ray camp, the last two hold outs – Paramount and NBC Universal – are considering switching sides.

But, hopefully, all of this will be a non-issue soon – with near-instant downloads, 32GB thumb drives, and 1080p network-enabled set-top boxes arriving in 2008, Blu-Ray may soon join its one-time nemesis in the bargain bin heap.

…Do we need discs at all? With Comcast promising high-definition downloads in 4 minutes and prices of flash memory falling like a rock, maybe we will jump right to a world where video simply lives as a file on a hard drive or flash disk. There’s logic to that, of course, at least in an engineering sort of way. Why spend all the money and time to stamp out discs and distribute them through stores, when the information on them can be simply zapped over a network to someone’s television?

Interestingly, this won’t necessarily put the local record store out of business. There’s still something great about meeting people in person to discuss and physically posses media; the last seven changes in media (LP to MP3/DivX) haven’t killed them off yet, but we’ll need download centers with virtual media racks on touch screen flat panel monitors in place for this to happen.

Concerns over defective by design content control may prevent that, but with EMI and others releasing DRM-free tracks, DRM-free movies may not be far off. It would certainly cut down on packaging, shipping and manufacturing costs, saving trees and petroleum in the process. Most importantly, the friendly neighborhood geeks at the record store could keep their jobs, too

via NY Times’s Bits blog

There is absolutely no way to effectively describe the scale of CES. It’s at least a fifteen-minute walk to get wherever you’re going, and you’re battling over 140,000 people to get there. Being an outdoorsy type of guy, I own a pair of hiking shoes, but had no Idea I would need them! The blisters on my feet have now turned into calluses and I feel like I barely even scratched the surface… I know I haven’t seen even 20% of all the booths.

So, how green is CES this year? Todd at Green Wombat had some thoughts. I liked one of his suggestions: Move the conference to a more pedestrian-friendly city. Every morning it’s been a sea of idling taxi cabs in a gigantic traffic jam… I learned my lesson and started taking the monorail, but it’s packed handling only a tiny fraction of the conference goers. A nice touch has been the free buses to the major hotels after the show each night; they ought to run them in the morning, too.

I did notice the biodegradable plates and utensils at the conference provided meals, but the vast majority of food here is coming from third-party food vendors, so there’s a lot of Styrofoam ending up in the garbage cans.

Parker Brugge, Senior Director and Environmental Counsel of the Consumer Electronics Association let me in on a little secret – the local waste management company is sorting recycling from refuse at the plant this year, rather than collecting it separately.

This is the future: Recycling integrated into the system to the point that you can assume it’s happening. At this point in history it’s important to keep spreading the message, but I look forward to a day when recycling is the rule and we don’t even think about it.

But while the conference itself might be more sustainable, we at EcoGeek aren’t sure about the mentality that has 140,000 people flocking to a city in the desert to drool over 150-inch plasman screen TVs. I mean…we’re drooling too, but maybe it’s time we step back and try to love our gadgets just a little bit less.

Earlier in the show I sat in on a panel with Tod Arbogast and his counterparts at HP, Sony, and several other companies. It’s been invigorating and humbling to see these multinational corporations cooperate on recycling and lifecycle design, even while they’re at each other’s throats in the marketplace. Tod is personally passionate about making the earth a better place to live, and he’s offered to help us guys at EcoGeek set up a round table discussion with some of his colleagues.

I caught up with him at the Dell ReGeneration booth and he gave us a short interview… I especially liked his tips for employees who want to help their bosses go Green.

TimBuk2 started in 1989 making messenger bags. They’ve always had concern for the environment, and they just recently gained some green exposure for recycling PVC trade show banners (I shudder to think how many will end up in the trash after CES) into bags. At the show yesterday we got a chance to talk with Andy and Perry, and they gave us a sneak peek at a prototype bag made from the packaging materials they receive with their fabrics.

They’re planning a green overhaul for their manufacturing facility in San Francisco later this year, which we’ll be following closely. Be sure to check out their website!

Matt Pushkin was hanging around the Dell ReGeneration booth at CES 2008, and we got to talking about alternative energy. Turns out, he works for Aquatic Energy, who are harvesting algae in Lousiana and turning it into BioDiesel. I asked him to share what he’s doing with us, and he gladly agreed.

Matt’s company is taking CO2 from local industry and pumping it into specially built algae ponds which are harvested every three to five days. While one acre of soy can produce about a barrel of biodiesel a in a year, the same land dedicated to this unique process produces between 1500-2000 barrels of B100 a year, depending on how sunny it is. Talk about solar power!

Check out Aquatic Energy’s Website for more info.