Lemondrop

Gadgets of the Future

Why pay for electricity you're not using? The BugPlug's eyes are motion sensors; when they don't sense you moving in the room for several minutes, the device will automatically turn off the electronics connected to it by a powerstrip.

Kamil Jerzykowski

Replace entire lamps with Blight, the solar powered Venetian blinds that charge up during the day and light the living room at night.

Vincent Gerkens

The Guilty Wallet comes in seven designs, each representing one of the seven sins. When you go to get money from the wrath wallet, for example, it will clamp down on your fingers. The Lust wallet will get hot to the touch the more you spend. You'll find out pretty quickly what you can live without.

Ruhel Mohammed

The Zeer cooling device is basically a refrigerator that doesn't use any power. It relies on the Nigerian concept of using earthenware ceramic for natural cooling. It's not cold enough for meats or fish, but will keep your fruits and veggies at just the right temperature.

Oliver Poyntz

Is there anything worse than buying new printer ink? The RITI Printer uses coffee or tea dregs as ink. Just put them in the cartridge on top, slide in your paper and move the cartridge from side to side. No electricity, no ink, no waste.

Jeon Hwan Ju

These sinister-looking Standby Monster stickers go on electronic devices and glow red when the device is sucking up energy even while it sits on standby. Think of it as one very scary reminder of the money you're losing.

Rachel Turner

The winner of this year's Greener Gadgets Design Competition is the Tweet-a-Watt, an open-source design that modifies the Kill-a-Watt energy monitor to enable it to publish a user's energy consumption to his Twitter account. There's nothing like a public shaming to change your behavior.

Limor Fried, Adafruit Industries & Phillip Torrone, MAKE magazine

The Power-Hog took second place. It's a piggy bank with a unique twist--kids feed it coins and it doles out 30 minutes of electricity. Would they play video games all night if they knew it would cost a week's allowance?

Mathieu Zastawny, Mansour Ourasanah, Tom Dooley, Peter Byar, Elysa Soffer, Mathieu Turpault

The typical clothes dryer is the second largest energy consuming appliance in the home, so it's no surprise this simple Indoor Drying Wall took the bronze. It's for apartment-dwellers or people in cold climates who find clotheslines impractical.

Rob Podell

Inspired by resourceful women who use salad spinners to wash their delicates, the inventors of the Laundry Pod created a small, hand-powered washing machine.

RKS Design Team