Green Options

Two Kenyan students have invented a device that allows bicycle riders to charge their phones as they pedal.

Deemed a “dynamo-powered smart charger”, the device should make it more economical for the 17.5 million Kenyans who use mobile phones to charge them. Even more impressive, the environmentally-friendly phone charger was originally built from scraps retrieved from a junkyard.

Smart social entrepreneurs and their like-minded investors would be smart to think about the breadth of opportunities that a cell phone creates for citizens of emerging markets.

Mobile phone service, kajeet, innovates by rewarding customers for choosing refurbished phones by planting trees. Win-win for kajeet, customers, and our planet.

Greenpeace planted a tracking device in an old TV, dropped it off at a recycling center, and tracked where it went. The results were disturbing, but sadly predicable.

The television ended up being shipped from the UK to Nigeria before being dismantled, a complete violation of European Union laws which require that potentially hazardous e-waste be disposed of within Europe.

Get a new cell phone. Get a new cell phone charger. And probably a new car charger, too, right?

It’s always seemed silly to me that all cell phones can’t use the same charger. Silly and wasteful. That may be changing. Bloomberg reports that mobile phone manufacturers and operators “will develop a standardized handset charger to save money and energy.”

The new chargers will use 50 percent less energy and cut the number made each year by half, lowering greenhouse gases from making and transporting them by 13.6 million tonnes to 21.8 million tonnes. So far, 17 companies are involved, including Hutchison Whampoa Ltd.’s 3 Group, AT&T Inc., Motorola Inc., France Telecom SA’s Orange, Qualcomm Inc., Samsung Electronics Co., Telefonica SA and Deutsche Telekom AG’s T-Mobile.

Why has it taken so long for this idea to get implemented? It’s so simple. It’s so smart. It makes so much sense.

Worried about the potential health effects of cellphone radiation? A clothing company named Remus has unveiled a stylish solution: the E-Blocker suit for men that features metal woven into the fabric to reflect radiation from mobile phones and Bluetooth devices. No word on whether E-Blocker fashions for women are in the works, though.

Cell phones could kill far more people than smoking or asbestos, suggests award-winning cancer expert Dr Vini Khurana.  Dr. Khurana says people should avoid using mobile phones whenever possible, and governments must take “immediate steps” to reduce exposure to their radiation. He concludes that “there is a significant and increasing body of evidence for a link between mobile phone usage and certain brain tumours”

source: truthout.org 

image:  webwiseforradio.com