The new green-themed Reclaim made by Samsung is more than your standard phone with slick green branding — though there’s a bit of that too.

What’s green (or blue), smaller than a deck of cards and will remind you to unplug the charger from the wall after charging? The Reclaim, the new green-themed smart phone made by Samsung for Sprint, is loaded with a bunch of green content, a handful eco-conscious accessories and an attention to sustainable packaging that make it more “green” than most other phones out there.

But you can’t just slap a case made from forty percent corn plastic, dip it in green paint and call it green, can you? The folks at Sprint sent me the new Reclaim so I could answer those questions myself.

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From green gadgets and gizmos, to DVDs and loose-leaf teas, I get the occasional product sent to me for a review.  In most cases, I like to give it a thorough once-over before I’m comfortable putting a stamp of (dis)approval on it.

If I take a long time to review a product, it is usually because: the product stinks and the manufacturer wouldn’t want me to publish anything anyway; the product really stinks and I don’t want to waste my time or my readers’ time with it, or; the product is actually quite good and the length of time spending reviewing it is extended because I’m trying to find something bad to say about it — but can’t. In the case of the DOT-it LED lights Sylvania sent me, the reason for my slow turnaround is definitely the last one. These lights are great.

The first of the two lights sent to me by Sylvania was the DOT-it Golden Dragon (pictured top). The ninja-sounding Golden Dragon is the Cadillac of Sylvania’s puck-style LED lights.

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But our creature comforts — like iPods, cell phones, PCs and plasma TVs — are sucking the life out of advances in energy efficiency around the world, the International Energy Agency says.

In other words, too much fruit is rotting on the vine.

The IEA says in a new “Gigawatts and Gadgets” report that electricity consumption from power-hungry electronics could cause household energy use to triple by 2030. That means increased greenhouse gases from electric generation, and increased electric bills for creating that power.

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Researchers at University of Oklahoma are reportedly working to create a sensor to detect bio-marker gases exhaled in the breath of a person with cancer, picking up on earlier studies showing that dogs can detect cancer by sniffing the exhaled breath of cancer patients.

In a study published two years ago, it was found that dogs identified breast and lung cancer patients with accuracies of 88% and 97%, respectively by smelling breath samples.

It has been proven elsewhere that gas-phase molecules are uniquely associated with cancer but the team will use nanotechnology to improve laser performance and shrink laser systems, which would allow battery-powered operation of a hand held sensor device.

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This plug n’ play system works with your USB 2.0 and 1.1 jacks, is Mac and PC compatible (phew!) and automatically turns on and off with your computer to conserve energy.

Did I mention how good looking it is? The hard drive is made with renewable bamboo and recyclable aluminum, the most recycled metal on the planet according to SimpleTech.

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The tongue was invented by Cecilia Jiménez-Jorquera and her colleagues at the famed institution and is reported in the Royal Society of Chemistry journal, The Analyst. She said of her innovation: “The device is based on similar principles to the human tongue and is sensitive to just five different tastes: sweet, salty, bitter, acidic and umami (savory).

Our results have demonstrated the potential of using multi-sensors as electronic tongues not only for distinguishing the samples according to the grape variety and the vintage year, but also for quantitative prediction of several sample parameters.”

Could these be “green” attributes of the new tongue, someone? It is said to be fast, portable, cheap to manufacture, and can be trained to “taste” new varieties as required.

As expected, since the reports, views and counter-views (over a glass of wine, of course) have been parlayed in hundreds of forums including blogs and even radio and TV talk shows in Spain but this certainly does not mark the death of the art of wine tasting.

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But it has taken six painstaking years to achieve this milestone with 10 syringe factories licensed in between. Health experts estimate that more than half of the 16 billion annual injections in poorer countries are done with non sterile syringes or needles, many of which are often just rinsed in tepid water between injections.

“There have been too many set backs to remember now, but also a steady recognition, acceptance and ground swell of demand for Auto-Disable syringes especially in developing world countries. At times we have all felt that we were going backwards faster than forwards”, he says.

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So could the same hold true for solar energy? There is a certain coolness factor to generating your own electricity, and just like the Prius you get a nifty display showing the amount of energy being produced by your solar installation.

However, there are few people in Europe who fully understand solar power, with many believing it to be too expensive or impractical in the less sunny parts of the continent. With this in mind, the European Photovoltaic Industry Association has organised ‘Solar Days’ this weekend in Belgium, France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Portugal, Spain, Slovenia, Switzerland, Denmark, Norway and Britain.

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Nokia: Remaking Mobile
Nokia is one of my favorite handset manufacturers. Not only do they have some amazing concept devices, such as the Nokia Remade, a handset made entirely of pre-used parts from old tires to aluminum cans, they also currently have working devices on the market that are reducing impact. With covers made of recycled material and chargers that are Energy Star compliant and then some, Nokia is making bold strides in the right direction.

The 3110 Evolve’s biocover is made with 50% renewable material, and the packaging has been reduced by 60% for the handset. Along the a charger that uses 94% less energy that Energy Star compliance requires.

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I’m leaving Green Options and Planetsave, though not to join Tom and John in their fight against the thetans.

I would like to say it’s to spend more time with my family, but that just makes me sound like a scandal ridden Bush official.

While I probably will get to spend more time with my family now, I’m leaving the company to work on my green home project and a few other side projects. My tenure at Green Options and Planetsave has been one of the most interesting, exciting, and invigorating times I’ve had. It ranks as one of my favorite startups (out of my current total of four) and I’m walking away with a greatly expanded network of friends and contacts, a ton of great experience in green publishing, and an awesome project to jump to.

What would have been called “The GO Home Project” is coming with me. I am buying the entire project from Green Options and taking it independent. I’m still working on a name for it (send it on if you have a good one) and will be building a site for it once that’s nailed down, but we’ll be starting up right away on sheagunther.org.

The short of it is is that me and my family are moving into two tipis to live for a year before building the coolest greenest house on the planet. We have 52 acres in North Yarmouth, Maine; the leading green architect in the state; a partnership with Smart HomeOwner Magazine, and a whole lot of great energy pushing it forward. Both me and my wife Heather will be blogging about living in the tipis and I will be set up in a smaller third tipi as my office. I’m sure I’ll have many a five minute snowshoe commutes to work this winter. We’re going to do our best to create a guide and recorded history of our life and work so as to inspire others to do choose the same green building path.

It’s been a great past year building Green Options and past few months working on the new Planetsave, but I’m super excited about all the fun stuff I’ll be able to take on now that my time is freed up from GO/PS work.

Here’s a few places you’ll be able to follow along on my adventures…

- SheaGunther.org - This is my home site, where I started blogging before I knew what blogging was (back in 2001) and current home of Musings of an Eco-Entrepreneur, the most kickass in-stasis eco-entrepreneur blog on the web. It’s been dormant since we launched Green Options but I’ll be doing a relaunch with a new theme in the next week or two. We’ll be blogging about living in the tipis and I’ll have a separate page for my links/musings drops . If you grew to like my blogs here on Planetsave, you’ll want to head over there.

- Treehugger- Graham Hill was kind enough to set up me up with a writing spot at Treehugger. I have to work out the exact details with their uber editor Michael but I couldn’t be more excited. I’ve been a huge fan of Treehugger since back in the day (back in the day in the green blogosphere means two+ years ago) and have always wanted to write there. They have such a great group of editors, writers, and an amazing reach- about 25X more daily readers than what Green Options is pulling these days.

- Yet to be named website for the Green Home Project. We’ will be documenting the crap out of our experience building the coolest greenest house on the planet on our yet to be named website. Sheagunther.org is a good place to go to keep up while I figure out what this new thing will be called.

- Stumblegods.com- It’s not really officially launched yet, but my buddy Michael (editor and founder of Groovy Green, founder and publisher of Ecorazzi, chief editor guy at Ecotality Life) and I will be sharing our insights about the power of StumbleUpon at our new site Stumble Gods. Our thumbs move masses baby.

- Ecotality Life- I’ve been working as a consultant with the awesome and talented Brooke Lowry over at Ecotality on the relaunch of their blog. We’ll be getting Ecotality Life up in the next week, in the meantime check out the current site. Ecotality Life will be relaunched with a focus on green gadgets and green business and investing and should be a good read.

- Email: sheagunther@gmail.com, Skype: shea_gunther

It’s been rad, I’ll miss a lot of the people at Green Options and Planetsave. I’ve gotta give it up to my main man Jan, the founder of Planetsave (he sold it to Green Options this Spring and works on both GO and PS stuff) and pimp dad advertising sales guru man. HIC! He’ll be assisted by the talented Noelle d’Estries (Michael’s sister) who will bring her savvy news sense (have you seen the Green Report, that’s all her) and keen wit to the table trying to fill the void that my voluminous ego will leave behind.

Keep up the good fight. Keep on saving the world.

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Then there are the unintended other consequences: all the resulting waste generated by gadget catalogs, gadget manuals, gadget bills ( i.e., the 300-plus-page printed iPhone bill) … again, not exactly Earth-friendly.

Yes, it’s possible to recycle these gadgets after they outlive their cutting-edge usefulness, but many consumers don’t: the old electronics end up either languishing in closets and basements, leaching heavy metals into landfills, or piling up in Chinese scrap heaps until they are, maybe, recycled.

So how can the situation be improved? Yes, going digital eliminates a lot of extraneous waste, but should we do more to encourage — or even mandate — electronics recycling? What is the best way to reduce all this waste?

The green parts

Built from 80 percent recyclable material with 40 percent of the phone casing made from corn-based bio-plastic. The Reclaim is 80 percent recyle-able material, not recycle-ed material. That is fairly normal. The bulk of material in most other cell phones can also be recycled and that’s why there is a market for used cell phones.

To Sprint’s credit, included in the box is a postage-paid cell phone recycling bag for you to drop your old phone in the mail to be scrapped for e-waste (which I filled three old phones sitting in a drawer I’ve been meaning to recycle).

Sprint has committed to recycle ninety percent of the phones they make by 2017. With current recycling rates at roughly one-third, Sprint admits they have a long way to go but are also quick to point out that they have collected roughly 18 million phones thus far and have increased recycling rates substantially over 2007.

I like the idea of the green content portals. Easily-accessed content from Planet Green including Best of Green, Five Simple Things, All Things Green and a Green Glossary from Planet Green. These shortcut keys access fast-loading pages of green content and info. Don’t expect links, images, flash, etc. These are fast-loading pages that provide quick access to basic green info, and for that purpose they are excellent.

I was also too-easily amused by the chirps, ribbits and other preloaded eco-sonic ringtones that keep with the Reclaim’s green theme.

Fortunately, the instruction manuals were not big, glossy tomes reprinted in seven languages. Only the “essentials” in manual literature were included in the package, but considering that several pages were filled with full-color images of people enjoying their new phone way too much, even that seemed a bit too much.

The paper that was included in the package was printed with soy inks on a paper stock that clearly had some percentage of recycled content in it, but nowhere on the package was that clearly labeled or otherwise discerned. Other than the plastic FedEx package the phone arrived in, the package itself has very little plastic, only two small bags.

Festooned with a litany of certification labels and brands, Sprint has clearly made some attempts to get the Reclaim some green cred — and most of it is deserved. Overall, I think Sprint has done more than pull of a green marketing coups. They have taken real steps towards cleaning up an industry that contributes an incredible amount of material into the global e-waste stream.

That is not to say there isn’t any room for improvement. Cutting back even more on printed materials and packaging waste and giving more attention to labeling and transparency would make the Reclaim even greener.

If this phone does anything, it helps show an industry that little steps can make a big difference when they are being manufactured at thousands of pieces at a time. Hopefully leading us to the day where a phone that pays attention to sutainability and cradle-to-cradle principles will become the norm, rather than the exception.

All photos except first one via Tim Hurst. Follow Tim on twitter.

Who is the mental giant who is responsible for this?

I finally got my first bill from AT&T in a cardboard box containing 300 pages of it. Apparently, they give you a detailed transaction of every text message sent and received. Completely unnecessary.

I weep for the trees lost due to this stupidity.

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This tip comes from Dani Greer, creator of The Non-Electric Life Squidoo Lens:

Americans are hooked on gadgets, and far too many of them are electric. Some of them are downright ridiculous, and don’t make life an yeasier or more pleasant. Why use a leafblower, when a broom or rake will do the job? Look in your kitchen. Is it Gadgetville in there? When was the last time you used that electric jar opener you got for Christmas? Even a regular electric can-opener is a waste of energy and resources…

And why use an electric grinder or blender when a mortar and pestle will work just fine for grinding up spices? A simple cheese grater works to grate ginger, too. A mandoline does as quick a job as a food processor. The added benefit is that non-electric gadgets aren’t nearly as noisy. Most of the time they’ll cost a lot less than that expensive Cuisinart. 

Here’s a quick list of some convenient gadgets and their old fashioned counterparts to consider:

• The handmixer (or standing mixer) = the whisk
• The electric can opener = the crank and turn can opener
• Microwave = oven and stove
• Toaster = broiler
• Hairdryer = air
• Electric razor = straight razor
• Electric grinder or food processor = mortar and pestle
• Coffee maker = french press
• Fan = open windows for cross breeze

Of course you may not be able to give up the electrical version completely, but you might be able to use it less. And simply unplug when not in use - this is a huge energy saver.

Amy says: When baking, I normally prefer to cream the butter and sugar together with my trusty wooden spoon, but when it comes to egg whites and whipped cream I let convenience trump my eco-conscience. After three years without a handmixer, I broke down and bought one over the weekend to make a lemon meringue pie. As a compromise, I resolve to only use it for special occasions.

For suggesting today’s tip Dani will receive two months of wind power from Renewable Choice energy. Have a tip you’d like to share? Send it along to us today.

The green parts

Built from 80 percent recyclable material with 40 percent of the phone casing made from corn-based bio-plastic. The Reclaim is 80 percent recyle-able material, not recycle-ed material. That is fairly normal. The bulk of material in most other cell phones can also be recycled and that’s why there is a market for used cell phones.

To Sprint’s credit, included in the box is a postage-paid cell phone recycling bag for you to drop your old phone in the mail to be scrapped for e-waste (which I filled three old phones sitting in a drawer I’ve been meaning to recycle).

Sprint has committed to recycle ninety percent of the phones they make by 2017. With current recycling rates at roughly one-third, Sprint admits they have a long way to go but are also quick to point out that they have collected roughly 18 million phones thus far and have increased recycling rates substantially over 2007.

I like the idea of the green content portals. Easily-accessed content from Planet Green including Best of Green, Five Simple Things, All Things Green and a Green Glossary from Planet Green. These shortcut keys access fast-loading pages of green content and info. Don’t expect links, images, flash, etc. These are fast-loading pages that provide quick access to basic green info, and for that purpose they are excellent.

I was also too-easily amused by the chirps, ribbits and other preloaded eco-sonic ringtones that keep with the Reclaim’s green theme.

Fortunately, the instruction manuals were not big, glossy tomes reprinted in seven languages. Only the “essentials” in manual literature were included in the package, but considering that several pages were filled with full-color images of people enjoying their new phone way too much, even that seemed a bit too much.

The paper that was included in the package was printed with soy inks on a paper stock that clearly had some percentage of recycled content in it, but nowhere on the package was that clearly labeled or otherwise discerned. Other than the plastic FedEx package the phone arrived in, the package itself has very little plastic, only two small bags.

Festooned with a litany of certification labels and brands, Sprint has clearly made some attempts to get the Reclaim some green cred — and most of it is deserved. Overall, I think Sprint has done more than pull of a green marketing coups. They have taken real steps towards cleaning up an industry that contributes an incredible amount of material into the global e-waste stream.

That is not to say there isn’t any room for improvement. Cutting back even more on printed materials and packaging waste and giving more attention to labeling and transparency would make the Reclaim even greener.

If this phone does anything, it helps show an industry that little steps can make a big difference when they are being manufactured at thousands of pieces at a time. Hopefully leading us to the day where a phone that pays attention to sutainability and cradle-to-cradle principles will become the norm, rather than the exception.

All photos except first one via Tim Hurst. Follow Tim on twitter.