Hasta La Gadget!

Amongst the real gadget gems in Sierra Club Green Home’s “50 green Gadgets” list, there are some hilariously under-thought items. For every solar-powered Nintendo Wii system, there’s a Helios Solar Grill (the monstrosity above), which actually pipes heat from its parabolic sun-gatherer through to the grill on the other side, and manages to look like the kind of Jetson-junk “inventions” I drew as a kid.

Our favorite, though, has to be the Wind-Helmet Power Generator, a device so wilfully and impractically green that it is almost like the practice helmet Luke Skywalker wore in Star Wars, blinding the wearer to the obvious before them. The blurb:

The Wind-Helmet has a windmill in your helmet. Wind flows over the helmet, through the propeller in the rear, and stores energy in a set of rechargeable batteries for later use. Although there are a lot of power chargers out there, the Wind-Helmet allows for you generate power with something you will already be using. [emphasis added]

This is extraordinary. Lets take a look at the bike and consider what else “you will already be using”. Spinning wheels, perhaps? Wheels which have been used for decades to power the bike’s lights, or even trickle-charge iPods? Wheels which can generate power either with a dynamo or an almost drag-free rare-earth magnet setup?

But, you know, a giant, Tron-style helmet with a bunch of fans and turbines inside, hooked up to a battery pack via a cable is much more efficient, don’t you think? We have a couple of suggestions ourselves. What about a pump somehow operated by the turning wheels which would squeeze air into a pressure tank. It would then squirt out into a turbine and the energy produced then stored in batteries.

Or what about giant loops of cable buried beneath the road, and bikes loaded with magnets. Bike lanes could be painted in swooping zig-zags to make riders cross and double-cross the subterranean wires and power whole cities. Or perhaps that is a little impractical?

We kid, but there are a bunch of handy little widgets in the gallery, too. Did we mention the solar-powered Wii? Amazing.

50 Green Gadgets You Can Use To Help Save The Planet [Sierra Club. Thanks, Emma!]