BBC NEWS | Technology | Gadget growth fuels eco concerns
This was something that had bothered me for sometime in terms of consumer electronics and particularly power consumption. I have proposed in the past alternative powered devices (although I am not technical enough to know whether they are really feasible) as a niche product but Ebay is going a step further:
The online auction house thinks that its already-established community of loyal users could be influential."We really became aware of the e-waste issue and we saw that our 125 million users can be a powerful force for good," eBay's David Stern told the BBC News website.
"We saw the opportunity to meet the additional demand we have on the site for used computers and saw the opportunity too to good some good for the environment."
There are also a number of other issues discussed here not least re-cycling, the cycle of upgrade and displosal of consumer mobile devices and power consumption particulalry of rechargers.
While this is a positive story I think more could be done. There must surely be a market for more efficient devices and more efficient rechargers but why not state this as an absolute vision. Why not try and make energy neutral devices that can self re-charge. Blue sky maybe but surely worthy of a vision piece?
Posted by Paul Goodison at January 20, 2005 08:53 AM | TrackBack