Eco Maniac: Cool Green Shit

We've talked at length about how plastic water bottles are going to be the death of civilization as we know it. Some 60 million of them are tossed each day in the U.S. alone with only 14% being recycled. Lord only knows how many are trashed globally. (Remember that big, Texas-sized flotilla of plastic in the ocean I wrote about?) Well, in addition to the biodegradable cellulose plastics that are currently being marketed, a new idea may be coming to pass: Brandimage's 100% renewable paper water bottles. According to Eco Geek, these little devils “will decrease energy consumed throughout the product's entire life cycle. The paper bottles are shipped out in containers made of ecoboard. Before it is used, the paper bottle is flattened out which makes transporting the product more eco-friendly than moving plastic bottles.”

If you like to camp or travel to Third World countries, you might want to check out the SteriPEN. It's a portable gadget that purifies water using shortwave ultraviolet light which kills bacteria, viruses and protozoa. Alternately, you could get a reusable water bottle that includes a filter.

How about this craziness: biodegradable, flushable dog poop bags! I'm a little bit excited about these guys. Apparently almost 4% of landfills or 10,585 thousand tons of dog poop is disposed of each year. Poop in plastic bags will stay for up to 1,000 years without breaking down. Even biodegradable bags can have a hard time breaking down when buried in a landfill without oxygen. Flush Doggy says their bags cost about $5 a month, plus they give 10% to the ASPCA.

In the Why in the World? category: The lemon-powered clock is idiosyncratically wasteful. I understand that it avoids batteries by using the acid from the lemon juice in reaction to the zinc and copper base plate, but still... the research and development that went into it better be leading somewhere better.

And then we have the Newspaper Log Roller. Fires aren't altogether environmentally friendly in the first place, however cozy they may be. Envirogadget argues that “you could recycle the newspaper… but as long as the paper is from sustainable woodland farming, burning old newspapers is theoretically carbon neutral.” I suppose if we're going to build fires (and we are), they should be as eco-friendly as possible.