Green Plug Introduces: A Universal Charger: Charging Technologies Articles: Eco20/20

Green Plug Introduces: A Universal Charger

Eventually, all cell phone chargers will be identical to one another. You will not have to stand around trying to plug your phone into the wrong charger, you will not have to rush out and buy another because yours is missing and no other chargers that are available will work. All of the cell phones sold about three years from now will have a universal charger to the benefit of cell phone producers, owners, and the environment.

The cell phone makers will benefit from this move by lowering the amount of time and production it takes to create and then make each different charger type. If a family of four each has a cell phone, the likelihood is that they each have a different charger. If something happens to one or another of those chargers, a new one will have to be bought. If that charger type is no longer available, a new phone will have to be bought, and honestly, most people are not going to buy a model that someone in the family already has, they will chose whatever is the latest or hottest on the market, which will mean a whole new charger type. The dead cell phone or broken charger will end up in a landfill, or sit in a drawer for years on end, possibly leading to toxic leakage.

Once the universal charger is in place, tons of potentially dangerous waste will cease being created. After this is done successfully with cell phones, it can be moved to other electronic needs as well. Green Plug, has other goals in mind including a "smart charger which will interact with a chip in the electronic device to manage power use during charging, idling and in peak power situations" (finestech.com).

Green Plug is working on this technology with the hope that it will be implemented in its stated time frame. China already has such a policy with all cell phones sold since June 2007 having to have the same universal charging standard.

Think of how much time, money, and energy can be saved from having only one type of cell phone charger. The companies that make them would not have to stop production to change equipment; they would be able to increase production, hopefully shifting some of those savings to the consumers. One charger could be bought and shared without having to search for the right one. Landfills will no longer be crammed with broken, obsolete, or mismatched cell phone chargers.

Reference:

The Green Universal Charger Takes a Step Forward (no author). Posted April 6, 2009 on http://www.finestech.com/technology. Retrieved August 16, 2009