The restaurant furniture supplier Go In, in collaboration with Münchener Boulevard Möbel GmbH are launching a new product range of furniture using an wood-less eco-friendly material called RESYSTA. The RESYSTA material looks and feels like wood, yet is composed of materials that don’t even include wood! The new RESYSTA products are designed to protect rainforests by reducing the amount of wood needed for high quality furniture.

The RESYSTA is made from several materials, most notably 60% rice husks, roughly 22% rock salt, and then about 18% mineral oil. There are probably a couple more secret ingredients too! The resulting material is completely recyclable, and very resilient against the elements, namely sun, rain, snow and salt water (such as on coastal properties). Unlike medium density fibreboard (MDF), RESYSTA does not swell when it gets wet. Additionally, RESYSTA does not split, tear or rot. The manufacturers are so certain of their new creation, that their furniture comes with a 15 year warranty!

Unsurprisingly, the material has taken 10 years to develop, and I expect to hear a great deal more about RESYSTA in the near future. The RESYSTA material was recently shown at the Hotelympia 2010 Show in London, where GO IN was awarded this year’s innovation award.

GO IN are a German-founded company, who have been around for over 35 years. They supply all kinds of commercial and contract furniture, like the furniture you see both indoors and outdoors at pubs, clubs, hotels, restaurants, airports, showrooms and other large buildings where you typically sit down on something solid!

Great to see a new modern material that’s a viable alternative to wood. Given the massive deforestation that still continues with the rainforest, everything that we can do to help keep our natural habitats gets my vote.

Want to buy this gadget? Check out the RESYSTA – Brand New Eco-Friendly Furniture Material article on EnviroGadget to see the lowest prices for this gadget.

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Growing plants in a greenhouse can be pretty useful for controlling pests and managing the environment for optimal growing conditions. However, greenhouses are usually humid due to water being evaporated and transpired by the plants. Loop is a water saving gadget that condenses moisture from the air and returns water back to the soil for the plants to use again.

Naci Cenk Aytekin, a Turkish industrial product designer, has come up with a solution that exploits the properties of aluminium. The aluminium leaves of the Loop device remain cool despite the warmer ambient temperature of the greenhouse. This means that water vapour can condense back into liquid form on the Loop device. The water is then trickled back to the soil down a series of tubes. A simple yet very novel design!

Source: EcoFriend

Want to buy this gadget? Check out the Loop – Greenhouse Water Saving Gadget article on EnviroGadget to see the lowest prices for this gadget.

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Fuji have released a new battery product called the Fuji EnviroMax Eco-Respectful Batteries. The batteries have been designed to be equivalent or better in performance compared to conventional batteries, but being 100% eco-friendly. The batteries contain no harmful mercury or cadmium compounds, nor are they packaged in harmful and non-recyclable PVC. Essentially, if they were disposed of in normal waste systems, they wouldn’t harm the environment.

It’s about time that someone re-designed batteries to be more eco-friendly. Fuji are making a big deal of the fact that their manufacturing process does not release any ozone depleting compounds and they operate under strict standards of environmental responsibility.

The batteries are no more expensive than conventional batteries, and are available in all the standard sizes (AAA, AA, C, and D). You can get the batteries directly from Amazon.

Want to buy this gadget? Check out the Fuji EnviroMax Eco-Respectful Batteries article on EnviroGadget to see the lowest prices for this gadget.

© 2008 to 2011 EnviroGadget.com. You can now keep up with the latest eco-gadgets on the EnviroGadget Facebook page. Why not help us to spread the word?

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The Kyoto Box Oven was created by a Kenya-based entrepreneur Jon Bohmer of Kyoto Energy. The very low tech oven was designed as part of a Financial Times Climate Change Challenge, beating 300 other contestants.

The Kyoto Box Oven can reach temperatures of 165 degrees Celcius, and is able to cook casseroles, boil water and bake bread. The great thing is, it costs just 5 euros (around £4.50 or $7), and reduces indoor smoke inhalation, avoids fire hazards and reduces deforestation. Since it packs flat, you can fit thousands of them on the back of a standard lorry.

The oven is made from 2 cardboard boxes, one inside the other, with a clear acrylic cover. Black paint on the inner box and silver foil on the outer help concentrate the heat. The clear plastic cover traps heat in a similar way to greenhouses.

Jon intends to use the prize money to fund mass trials in 10 countries including South Africa, India and Indonesia. The box is designed to help save the millions of children who die from unclean drinking water and uncooked food. Initial calculations suggest that using the box will save around two tonnes of carbon emissions per family per year!

Source: EcoFriend

Want to buy this gadget? Check out the 5 Euro Box Oven wins green innovation award article on EnviroGadget to see the lowest prices for this gadget.

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The EcoDrain is a clever heat exchanger with no moving parts. It is designed to take the excess heat from the waste shower water and use that to pre-heat the cold-water inlet to an electric shower. This means you can cut the energy used by the water heater by up to 25-40%!

The diagram above demonstrates how it fits with the plumbing of a household shower. The EcoDrain is made from stainless steel, which has a non-stick coating on the inside of the waste water pipe. The non-stick coating is designed to stop the drain becoming clogged from soap and dirt. The energy from waste shower water is wasted anyway, so it makes sense to try and use it somehow.

It would be interesting if a variation was used to help heat water tanks or underfloor heating from waste hot water throughout the house. That’s a lot of untapped waste energy! A great innovation though!

Source: Inhabitat

Want to buy this gadget? Check out the EcoDrain – Energy Saving Heat Exchanger article on EnviroGadget to see the lowest prices for this gadget.

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When you evaporate and condense water, the condensed water is 100% pure water. This means the purified water is completely safe to drink, as nasty chemicals and bugs do not evaporate with the water. The WaterCone is a very simple gadget that purifies water by the process of evaporation.

Water is poured on to the black tray. As water evaporates, it condenses on the inside of the clear plastic cone. The condensed water then runs down the sides of the cone into the outer tray. When the outer tray is full, you then drain it into your water vessel of choice.

The Water Cone can hold up to 1.7 litres of dirty water at a time, and it only takes a few hours for the water to be condensed. It costs around $30 (even less with mass production I’d imagine), so is easily cheap enough for mass distribution. The cone is designed to last about 5 years, so that’s a great level of usage for a very low-tech water purification eco gadget!

Source: EcoFriend

Want to buy this gadget? Check out the Evaporation-based Water Purifier Cone article on EnviroGadget to see the lowest prices for this gadget.

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Now I love popping bubble-wrap, but I must say that I question how recyclable it is. But it is really cheap and easy to get hold of, and bubble wrap perfectly protects the majority of items you post or pack. A group of designers, Wonjae Lee, Sunkyu Kim & Sangjun Hahn, have come up with Paper Wrap, which uses a pre-cut cardboard design to emulate bubble wrap without the plastic.

The design uses a pre-cut symmetrical pattern that folds out to form a flexible and protective layer. The effect is a layer of pyramid shapes on the surface of the cardboard. If the cardboard is made from recycled sources, then the solution is very eco-friendly.

However, I can imagine that in practice the “sticky out bits” would flatten, making the Paper Wrap cardboard no different to a flat sheet of cardboard. Shredded cardboard would provide a great protective layer as an alternative to plastic. I like the attempt at an alternative style of packaging, but I think that this implementation of packaging would be ineffective.

Source: YankoDesign

Want to buy this gadget? Check out the Bubble Wrap Alternative – Paper Wrap article on EnviroGadget to see the lowest prices for this gadget.

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The Playpump is a playground merry-go-round that harnesses the limitless energy of children playing to pump clean water out of the ground. More than 1000 PlayPumps have been installed in schools in South Africa, Mozambique, Swaziland and Zambia. Access to clean water in Africa is a huge challenge, and the innovative PlayPumps achieves this nicely.

While children play on the merry-go-round, water is pumped up to 1400 litres of water per hour in to a 2500-litre water tank that stands 7 metres above the ground. The PlayPump is able to pump water from up to 100 metres deep too.

The water tank has been designed so that it can feature advertising on any of the 4 panels. The boards can be used to communicate health messages or for commercial advertising. The revenue generated from the advertising is used to fund maintenance for the pumps.

The pump promotes play and clean drinking water. It’s a great initiative!

Source GizMag and PlayPumps.org

Want to buy this gadget? Check out the PlayPump – Children-powered Water Pump article on EnviroGadget to see the lowest prices for this gadget.

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An engineer (read: big kid) has built an impressive go-kart that uses 6 Optima D34 (12V 55AH) batteries that allows the kart to reach speeds of up to 60 mph (100 kph). The kart is supposedly the fastest electric go-kart in the world, and therefore is a record-breaker. The batteries drive a S-33 motor and an Alltrax AXE-7234 controller, although the battery life is not mentioned.

What’s interesting (and dangerous?) is that the batteries are mounted on the edges of the kart. These are automotive-grade batteries, weighing an incredible 42.9lbs (20kg) each! I bet that 6th battery is used just to carry the weight of the other 5 batteries! However, if he uses some large solar panels to charge the batteries, then it’s a completely eco-friendly gokart! The rest of the kart is made from cheap car parts.

If you watch the video, he clocks the speed using a sat nav. Creative speed measurement!

Source: Eco-Friend

Want to buy this gadget? Check out the Engineer Builds World’s Fastest Electric Go-Kart article on EnviroGadget to see the lowest prices for this gadget.

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A designer by the name of Wu Jian has come up with a concept for an eco-friendly battery gadget. The Soft Solar Battery is made of several layers of film, including a flexible battery and flexible solar panel. The battery is rolled out flat to charge up in the sun, the level of charge indicated by the small display on the panel.

When you wish to use the flexible battery, you simply roll up the film into a cylinder to use within conventional devices that need a battery. It’s an interesting concept, but I image the film will degrade/peel very quickly. Technical specifications have not been provided, so I get the impression this is merely a concept.

I think that high capacity rechargeable batteries are the (near-term) future, but simply using standardised charging devices as a power source. I don’t think that the Soft Solar Battery is a practical eco-friendly energy source.

Source: Red Dot

Want to buy this gadget? Check out the Flexible Solar Panels roll into green AA batteries article on EnviroGadget to see the lowest prices for this gadget.

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