David Burton/Beateworks/Corbis
READ MORE ABOUT:
Putting solar panels on your roof is one thing, but did you know that you can grab a little handful of sunlight just to power your iPod™, your cell phone, or any other mobile gadget, with an eco-friendly charger? You can even make your own portable solar power station, so go ahead and put some green in your Blackberry™.
There's some good reason to think that the folks at Apple™ are looking into solar iPhone™, iPod™, or maybe even laptop designs for the future, but for now, portable electronics run on whatever juice is coming out of your wall socket. There are a few tricks that'll help you conserve power, like changing screen settings to use less backlight or to go into standby mode when not in use. At the end of the day, though, it's even better to get your devices off the grid altogether, by unplugging them from the wall and powering them with electricity from a sustainable source.
The green option for putting the bop in your mp3 player, or the ring in your phone's ringtone, is to get a portable solar charger that can spin sunlight into power for your existing devices. You can purchase a readymade option like this one or this one, or if you have a little bit of a handy streak, you can even make your own simple eco-smart power supply for your mobile devices for about $30. If you don't need to take your charger with you, there's even the option of rigging up a totally nifty bike-pedal generator in your living room.
If you can't green the whole energy infrastructure of your house by installing something big like solar panels or a wind turbine, you can still find ways to get some items in your house off the grid, and your mobile devices are a great place to start.
This post was inspired by World's Greenest Homes.
-
- {}
