On this travel gear blog I have bitched and moaned plenty about the lack of standardization with chargers for electronics, especially when I posted a review of something like the iGo charger or Callpod Chargepod. While these are both fine items I am happy to recommend, it's kind of sad that we need them. Why do three phones require three chargers anyway? It's just stupid. All those chargers do is transmit electricity, so the only reason to have a proprietary connector is to lock in your customers, annoy them, and make it harder for them to travel.
Either someone has been listening to people like me or the executives at these companies are finally realizing they are at the bottom of the barrel when it comes to helping preserve the environment. I was shocked and elated to see this small headline in USA Today: "Standardized Phone Chargers Coming. "
Here's the full scoop on the announcement from the International Herald Tribune. It is filled with depressing factoids like these:
- Cast-off chargers generate more than 51,000 metric tons of waste a year
- Every 20 months, 48 million to 51 million mobile phone chargers become obsolete.
- The GSM Association...calculated a reduction of 13.6 million to 21.8 million metric tons a year in greenhouse gases from making and shipping replacement chargers.
So they are waiting until 2012 to make this happen because....?
See solutions online at iGo.com
1 comment:
well i actually use the oneadapter, which i bought from storage network solutions ltd, they have a universal adapter that allows me to charge 3 devices! so i dont have to waste my money buying three different chargers for 3 different products! how cool is that! i thik that this charger should be used everywhere!
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