Delivered the other day, I received the latest version of the WWF (Word Wildlife Fund) catalogue of Environmentally Friendly Products. Not sure why I got a copy but I have to say that there are some jolly good ideas in there.
The first that caught my eye was something that I have thought is a fine idea for a long time now, and that is the wind up radio. What a fantastic idea for producing 
communications without the need for power. A radio needs very little power and therefore to have it wind up is a great idea. Just 30 seconds of winding on the handle to provide a ‘charge’ will give you 30 minutes of radio to listen to. Now that is cool.
I have to confess that I looked at the gadgets section straight away and another of the items that caught my eye was the torch that doesn’t need batteries. I thought “eh!, how on earth does that work then?” Well apparently it works using motion. As you move the torch around the motion charges the batteries that are in the torch. It is the kinetic energy that creates the charge, probably similar to a dynamo creating electricity as you peddle a bike. The product claims that just a two minute shake of the torch will give up to 1 hour of light. This could work so well with other things too. I often use my iPod at the gym when running and cycling and therefore why not create an iPod that uses the motion of me running in order to power the device? Come on Apple keep up!
Next was a kettle. We all know that in order to save energy we should only be boiling the right amount of water that we need instead of boiling the whole kettle for one cup. Well in the catalogue there is kettle which you can fill to the top but you then tell it how many cups you want to boil. The desired amount of water is then passed to another chamber and only that amount is actually boiled, and therefore this is saving energy. Neat idea.
There were allsorts of other gifts and ideas throughout the catalogue that I thought would be really good to buy and good to purchase as presents and gifts for other people e.g. at Christmas. You can also shop online too, which is an added bonus. And as all the products are not harmful to the environment then you are good to go!
