I’m a little late on this after the holidays but Core77 have announced a really exciting Design Competition in collaboration with the Greener Gadgets Conference. Submissions started on December 26th and close on January 27th so you still have 20 days to go. If you’ve been dreaming up green gadgets in your spare time this might be a great chance to put it onto paper (or onto your design software of choice) and get feedback from the community.

The Greener Gadgets Conference is a “one day conference featuring key representatives from some of the largest consumer electronics companies in the world, innovators from academic thinktanks, members of startups focused on renewable energy, and some of the leading minds in the word of sustainable design and business”. Some of the sponsors include Nokia and HP. And there is a very cool list of Presenters including: Mary Lou Jepsen - Chief Technology Officer, One Laptop Per Child Project, Markus Terho - Director of Environmental Affairs, Nokia, Renee St. Denis - Director of Product Take Back and Recycling, HP and utterly fascinating Inventor, Engineer & Technoartist Natalie Jeremijenko. Jeremijenko looks worth the price of admission alone, her previous work has focused on socio-technical change and she was also named one of the 40 most influential designers by I.D. Magazine and one of the inaugural Top 100 Young Innovators by the MIT Technology Review.

The competition requires you create 3 images. One showing the object itself, another showing it within context, and another showing the detail or exploded view of the gadget. You’ll also need to provide a 500 word description of your project. First prize is US $2500 and there are two runner-up prizes of US $1000 each. The full design brief can be found on the competition site here. But the short of it is that the product should try to cut down on environmental impact throughout it’s lifecycle and use.

I’m really interested in seeing the results, and it’s good to see companies like Nokia and HP behind this as well. You have to wonder what the impact is of gadgets on the environment especially since the numbers in use over the last ten years have risen so exponentially with the combined popularity and affordability of cell phones, mp3 players, digital cameras and hand-held games. I’d be curious to know what kind of power usage increase they’ve caused. The gadgets I own seem to go a long time between charges but the number of items with rechargeable batteries seem to be growing as well. I hope that some of the newer gadgets come with alternative power capability through solar or even kinetic energy. I have to say I wish the disc in my Nike+ iPod sport kit had the kinetic energy battery option. It would seem like a good idea rather than having to buy a new one and consequently a new receiver as well every time the battery runs down (or is that the plan?)