I promised to post on the winners of the Greener Gadgets Design Competition, and I completely forgot.

You may like to remind yourself of my tips – I went for Recompute (the recyclable cardboard computer) and the RITI printer, which converted coffee and tea dregs into ink for printouts.

Both of these made it to the top 13, but not to the final shortlist of 4. The final winner was Tweet-a-Watt, pictured below.

Have you ever seen anything less inspiring in your life? The purpose of this nondescript little gadget is to measure the daily power consumption of a household, and then automatically ‘tweet’ it for all to see. I can see that knowing how much you consume, and setting yourself targets to reduce the total is a good idea, but the main point of this gadget is the element that allows the Twitter updates.

Why would you want to do that? If it was supposed to create a culture of shame around over-consumption, I could maybe get behind the idea, but there’s no mention of anything like that. It just seems designed to tap into the morbid curiosity about other people’s dull existences that Twitter engenders already. (I’m not a fan. Can you tell?)

The only aspect of this that impresses me is that they have made the hardward opensource – ie you can download the design, the instructions and the scripts you need to make your own for no charge. Now that’s a good idea. Shame their product is so pointless.

I came across this idea today. I know the story’s more than a month old, but I still think it’s interesting enought to warrant a post.

The city of Oslo is trialling a scheme whereby 80 of the city’s buses will be run on biomethane from local sewage processing plants.

Apparently the buses (like the one above) only need minor modifications to change from diesel to poo-power.

As far as I can see, there are only two potential problems with this otherwise fantastic innovation. Firstly, are the buses more likely to explode, since they’ll be carrying a big tank of biomethane? And secondly, what on earth is it going to smell like?

But the important thing is that Norway is taking positive and effective action to stick to their target of being carbon neutral by 2050. Maybe instead of just replacing the bendy buses in London with a new Routemaster, Boris might consider introducing someting as good as this?

On the 27th of February, the Greener Gadgets Design Conference will take place in New York. Here, they will announce the winner of the Greener Gadgets Design competition, although it seems a shame to pick between such brilliant concepts.

Stand-out among the nominees is Bulb 2.0, which attempts to combine a modern, attractive aesthetic with an efficient energy saving bulb.

And the RITI printer, which uses coffee or tea dregs instead of ink.

You pour the dregs into the funnel at the top, insert your paper and then it functions just like a traditional printer. Clever, although I’m not entirely convinced it won’t make your print-outs smell funny…

But my absolute favourite, and the one I not only think should win but that I would like to buy in the near future, is  Recompute.

It isn’t just a computer housed in a cardboard box – designer Brenden Macaluso intends to make it a fully sustainable desktop computer by creating a design that has fewer parts, takes less time and labour to produce, and will ultimately be easier to dispose of.

I think it looks fantastic, but my initial concern was with cooling, because I assumed cardboard would heat too quickly and be more likely to catch fire. But apparently it is much more heat resistant than the plastic used at the moment, with with a much higher fire and ignition point — 258°C and 427°C — whereas plastic will start to melt at 120°C.

I can’t wait until they put this into production.

You can see all 50 nominees, and vote for your favourites here. I’ll be updating later in the month on the outcome of the competition.

HT – Laura June at Engadget

The latest innovation that’s going to help save the environment:

So far this year, we’ve had the government withdraw 100w and 75w lightbulbs from sale – a move which could apparently save us up to £7 a year in electricity. (For a particularly amusing account of this, look here. I rather enjoyed the part where it said that ‘the humble incandescent bulb… has become a way of life’. I wasn’t aware people predicated their lifestyles on lightbulbs).

Anyway, the ecofont. The idea is that the font contains lots of tiny circular gaps, so that when it is printed it uses less ink. Here’s a sample, so you can see what I mean:

Its inventors assure us that when used at size 9 or 10, the difference in appearance is negligible, while it means you are using up to 20% less ink.

Best of all, it is completely open source. The Dutch inventors say that they do not intend to make a profit from the font.

Download it here.