WC Archive

Every Sunday, Justin Thomas of Metaefficient brings us the best in the week's green design breakthroughs. Here's 2005's first installment:

LED Floodlights

Enlux, a company in Arizona, has created floodlights built from LEDs. They did this by removing the diodes from their individual plastic housings and clustering them on a heat-dissipating circuit board, known as a light engine. They also created finned aluminum housing that spreads the heat across its surface. The 22-watt floodlight ($80) gives off about as much brightness as a 45- to 65-watt incandescent bulb. The real energy efficient comes in with the colored floodlights, which are ten times as efficient as their incadescent counterparts.

Human-Powered Snow Thrower

This new snow throwing tool, called a "Whovel", uses your body weight to lift and throw snow and slush. After suffering repeated back injuries, the company founder began working on snow removal designs that could reduce back injuries, while avoiding the many problems associated with gas-powered snow blowers.

Solar Shower

This looks interesting — it's a solar shower that heats 5 1/2 gallons of water with a built-in solar collector. Created in Europe, the imported shower is able to heat water to 140°F in 1-2 hours in sunny weather. The manufacturer claims that the shower is capable of capturing heat from the ambient temperature in the air on hot, but cloudy days. It hooks up to a regular garden hose, and allow you to adjust the water temperature from warm to cold (cold water is delivered directly via the garden hose).