We’re all about the green stuff these days – no, we don’t mean filthy lucre, though we could certainly do with some of that; we mean clean, eco-friendly living and working. We’re recycling all our household waste, going electric on the car front, getting out the bicycles more often and some of us are even cutting down on our environmentally damaging air travel, keeping it down to just one sun holiday, one ski holiday, one Tuscany wedding and a couple of city breaks a year.
We’re avoiding fast fashion and fossil fuels and making sure our carbon footprint is as light as a feather. If truth be told, we’re feeling a bit smug about our sustainability – if we went any greener, we’d be mistaken for Martians.
But let’s just press pause there for a minute. Have we looked at our personal tech lately? We may think we’re great friends of the Earth but are the gadgets we own marking us out as enemies of the environment? It’s time to reassess the electronic gear we use every day and see if it is helping or hindering our green targets. The gadgets we use may be small but they can still have a big impact on the environment, especially if they’re not made from recyclable materials or not built to last.
With discarded, obsolete tech creating ever-larger levels of landfill and data centres voraciously eating up electricity from the national grid, we need to think carefully before we shell out for yet another trendy gadget. We want our tech to be part of the solution, not part of the problem, so here are some eco-friendly gadgets that will mark you out as someone plugged in to the green agenda.
Making products that are more relevant, more efficient and run smoother with less energy consumption
How your KitKat break is helping cocoa-farming families close the living income gap through an innovative programme
Renewable gas will power Ireland’s decarbonised future
All aboard: Ten great things to see and do in Heritage Week
Casetify phone case
When you throw away your old phone after getting an upgrade it’s not just the phone getting dumped – it’s the protective phone case as well, and that’s often made of plastic or other potentially harmful material. So how can you protect your phone while also helping to protect the planet? Casetify has you covered with its range of recyclable phone covers made from biodegradable materials. So, when you no longer have any need for it you know it won’t still be littering the place long after you’ve gone. There’s a Casetify phone case to fit every phone under the sun,
Only problem is, the Casetify range has so many funky and custom-made designs, you might be reluctant to dispose of your little piece of pocket art. There’s an endless choice of arty designs created by talented folk from around the world, not to mention brand collaborations with the likes of Lucasfilm, Pokémon and K-Pop superstars BTS. You can even create your own personal Casetify design by uploading a photo from Instagram.
House of Marley Bag of Riddim 2 portable audio system
€234/ £199.99 thehouseofmarley.co.uk
You’ve packed your vegan picnic, put on your Ecco sandals and are cycling down the country for a day out in nature. So, the last thing you want to bring is a big lump of plastic to pump out your favourite tunes. Enter the House of Marley with their range of speakers, headphones and turntables crafted from sustainable materials. The Bag of Riddim portable Bluetooth speaker is made from beautiful bamboo, so it will look right at home in the meadow as you sit and sip your organic wine and nibble your crunchy veg. The speaker boasts warm, superior sound, with 3.5in woofers and 1in tweeters, and gives 10 straight hours of musical entertainment on a full charge. It comes with a streamlined, removable carry bag with shoulder strap, made from the company’s trademark Rewind fabric, which is 100 per cent recyclable.
Rocketbook Fusion reusable notebook
€54.99 currys.ie
Some of us go through reams of notepaper to make to-do lists – most of which we never even look at again. Here’s my most recent to-do list:
Get beer; finish this article; start my novel; save the trees; buy a Rocketbook.
The Rocketbook is a fiendishly simple idea. It’s an erasable smart notebook that eliminates all that paperwork piling up. You simply write your notes on it using a Pilot FriXion pen, then scan the finished page using the free Rocketbook app. Your scribbles are now safely uploaded to the cloud, so you can simply rub out the Rocketbook page and start a new note.
So rather than go through the equivalent of an entire tree in your lifetime by using old-fashioned notebooks, you can turn over a new leaf and use the Rocketbook as your constant note-taking companion, saving your notes for handy online storage and retrieval – and doing your bit to save our forests in the process. What adds to the appeal is that the Rocketbook range comes in lots of lovely, tactile styles so you get that old-fashioned pen-and-paper hit while getting the convenience and efficiency of digital.
And if you’re one of those with a fear of the blank page, fear not; the Rocketbook Fusion, for instance, features custom-made page layouts to help you keep your personal and business life neatly organised.
Acer eKinekt BD 3 bike desk
US$999 acer.com
Ever wished you could do a workout while doing work at the same time? No, me neither. But for those high-achieving types who want to maximise their activity while minimising their impact on the environment, the Acer eKinect BD 3 could be the ultimate all-round fitness and productivity solution. It’s an exercise bike that doubles as an office desk, so you can write up that all-important report while burning those calories, all the while saving on energy costs. The eKinekt uses pedal power to charge up your devices, converting the kinetic energy from your legs into battery power for your laptop, mobile phone, and other devices. You can move the desk partly forward to allow you to lean in and do a proper cycle or move it back into place to allow you to sit up straight and pedal while you work. You can track your exercise through the app and get an idea of how much energy you’ve generated. Why hasn’t someone thought of this until now, says you. What sort of sadistic mind could come up with this desk/bike chimera, says us. It launched in June in the US with a price of US$999, and will also be available in Europe in the coming weeks.
Triwa Sub Ocean Plastic smart watch
€169 triwa.com
Next time you’re going for a swim or a surf, slip on one of Triwa’s Sub Ocean Plastic smart watches and remind yourself that this watch used to be just another piece of waste plastic polluting the ocean before the Swedish company recovered and recycled it to make their funky, affordable smart watches. The company not only uses recycled ocean plastic for its watches, it also recycles metal from illegal weapons to make their Humanium range – now there’s a disarming thought. The Ocean Plastic range includes the Deep Blue, the Octopus, the Orca and the Nemo. They’re water-resistant up to 10 metres, and have a cool, retro 1970s style.
Microsoft Ocean Plastic Mouse
€34.99 currys.ie
It’s a monster task to clear the plastic waste clogging the world’s oceans but you’ve got to start somewhere – and a good place to start is by buying gadgets made from recycled ocean plastic. Microsoft’s Ocean Plastic Mouse is a nice, streamlined yoke in white, with lovely turquoise speckles that conjure up sunny beaches or lazy afternoons on the terrazzo. Okay, maybe that’s not the best way to motivate you to work, but if you have this Bluetooth-enabled customisable mouse on your desk as you work from home, it will brighten up your working space and remind you why you do all this hard work in the first place.