Sep 06

Green House’s lantern runs on salt and water, powers your gadgets via USB

Posted in: Today's Chili

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Japanese company Green House Co Ltd has quite an eclectic product portfolio, what with its women-only camcorder and peripherals like a PCI Express interface card with USB 3.0 support. Its latest device falls under another category entirely: the rivetingly named GH-LED10WBW is an LED lantern that runs on just water and salt; no batteries required. The light source provides eight hours of electricity per dose of saline water, and the lantern comes with a dedicated water bag for mixing the solution. The salt / water combo acts as an electrolyte with the magnesium (negative electrode) and carbon (positive electrode) rods inside the lantern. Users can get about 120 hours of power with the Mg rod before they’ll need to buy a replacement (the rod is sold separately to begin with). More than just supplying a battery-free source of light, though, the lantern can function as a charger, thanks to a USB port built into the casing. Pricing has yet to be announced, but the GH-LED10WBW will be available by mid-September.

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Green House’s lantern runs on salt and water, powers your gadgets via USB originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 06 Sep 2012 23:35:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Jul 12

Nespresso’s Pixie coffee maker made from used coffee capsules

Posted in: Today's Chili

If you’re finding that you need some environmental friendliness to go along with your morning coffee, you might want to check out Nespresso’s new Pixie coffee maker. According to Nespresso, 98% percent of the machine is made from recycled aluminum coffee capsules, so when you’ve used your capsules up, you’re invited to deposit them at one of Nespresso’s stores so that they may be used in the creation of another Pixie machine. Sounds pretty cool, no?


The machine itself comes in at 4.3 x 9.25 x 12.83 inches and is available in 6 different colors and 2 different finishes. It’s going to set you back quite a bit of money, however – listed at around $215 on Amazon, it isn’t exactly what you can call cheap, but with other coffee makers and espresso machines sometimes costing hundreds of dollars more, it’s at least reasonable in that respect. The Pixie also sports some energy saving features, shutting off after 9 minutes of inactivity and using 40% less power than other machines in category A.

There’s no arguing that the Pixie looks pretty sleek and that the idea behind it is commendable, but will it catch on? A lot of people are passionate about the environment, but a lot of people are also really busy (or, alternatively, really lazy), which might make it hard for Nespresso to get a satisfactory amount of used coffee capsules returned to them. Then again, we suppose recycling these capsules is preferable to having them fill the trash can day after day, so who knows? The Pixie may yet become the next big thing in going green.

[via Nespresso]


Nespresso’s Pixie coffee maker made from used coffee capsules is written by Eric Abent & originally posted on SlashGear.
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