3 Green Products to Watch For

Two smart plugs and some natural packaging to make a sustainable splash.

Mar. 11, 2010 — by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address)

I’ve recently come across a few energy-saving devices you’ll be seeing in the not-too-distant future.

Here are three.

ThinkEco Modlet
Plug your computer or an appliance into this two-outlet smart plug, and it sends energy usage data to a computer with a wireless receiver. It can also cut power to appliances when they’re not being used, cutting down on vampire loads.

The computer software recommends savings programs, and you can share your savings ideas with other. Look for this around the fourth quarter of 2010.

ThinkEco Modlet

Picowatt from Tenrehte Technologies
It’s another smart plug, but a bit different than ThinkEco’s Modlet. First off, there’s just one outlet in each Picowatt, but multiple Picowatts in a house form a wireless mesh network.

The Picowatt plug serves as a mini web server that can control your appliance from anywhere in the world and schedule events so the appliance runs at your convenience. This will also hit the market in the fourth quarter of 2010 for less than $100, according to the company.

Tenrehte Technologies’ Picowatt

EcoCradle Packaging
We hear this all the time: reduced packaging isn’t green. Ah, but it is, because it uses far less resources in both the packaging and product distribution.

Ecovative Design goes a step further, using a packaging that grows in a form to mold around products and is made using mycelium fibers from mushrooms. The mycelium fibers transform particles like seed hulls to turn them into a strong fiber polymer, like stryofoam, that is biodegradable. When you’re done with it, you can throw it in your garden. You’ll start seeing this kind of packaging in the spring. Or just throw it in the trash. And yes, you can eat it, but it won’t taste good. And it won’t rot in the box.

You can get involved in promoting better packaging. At the recent Greener Gadgets conference in New York, Ecovative Design’s Eben Bayer asked attendees to take pictures of old-style Styrofoam packaging that needs to go away, and send the pics to .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address).

Styrofoam packing peanuts, anyone?

EcoCradle Packaging

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