Eco Friendly Gadgets: Energy Products Articles: Eco20/20

Eco Friendly Gadgets

With an ever-expanding environmental awareness, many people are looking for ways to reduce their burden on the environment and shrink their ecological footprints. The market has listened and with each passing month, more and more eco-friendly technologies are becoming available.

From ways to reduce home non-renewable energy consumption such as using solar panels, small wind turbines, geothermal energy, or micro-hydro technology, providing one's own renewable energy is easier and less expensive than it ever has been. But electricity is not the only technology that has expanded in regards to our home lives. Homes in general can now be made green and eco-friendly from being built with recycled or renewable resources, to having LEED certified standards for one's housing plans. You can get radiant heat in your home that uses warm water tubes under the floor to help heat one's home. Solar and tankless water heaters are now reducing the usage of our homes biggest energy guzzlers.

But beyond the practical, there are now technologies that are improving the eco-friendliness of almost all our favorite electronic gadgets, and this allows for us to continue to live in the information age, with access to the information and people we need, wherever we go, without blatant disregard for our impact on the planet.

From basic things like iPod covers and cell phone "skins", more and more everyday products are being made out of recycled materials. This reduces our input into the waste stream and actually takes things out by reusing what is salvageable from other products, and it reduces the need for virgin inputs and more destruction.

Solar or hybrid solar-wind powered chargers are becoming more and more widely available in the marketplace, allowing us to make the most environmentally conscious charging choices with our already existing electronic gadgets.

Companies like Nokia have even debuted eco-friendly cell phones. They offer a phone that is made out of recycled materials, that also comes with an energy efficient smart charger. More cell phone companies are following suit and you can even find gadgets such as Blackberry mobile devices that have been upcycled.

There are speakers made out of recycled materials that are powered by your iPod or other mp3 device are highly energy efficient and do not require you to be plugged into an outlet, or carry batteries around with you. They run off the battery power of your iPod or other device.

You can find UBS flash or thumb drives whose cases are made from recycled materials, and even highly energy efficient external hard drives that are made from recycled material and renewable resources. Even companies that produce household products like vacuum cleaners are debuting energy efficient models that are made from recycled materials to meet the needs of their more eco-conscious consumers.

With an ever expanding market of eco-friendly gadgets, you can make conscious purchasing decisions pretty much regardless of what you are buying. With each passing year that more eco-friendly products become available, the more widespread their use will become, leading to an overall, positive impact on the environment. Whether you want to get off the grid or just be conscious in your consumption, check out all the amazing, and varied technologies available.