5 (plus one) eco-friendly gifts: tech edition

Here's the great thing about those of us who consider ourselves tech aficionados: we're problem solvers. For example, my holiday season problem is I love tech, but I also love sustainability. Luckily, there are other companies who feel the same, so here are some eco-friendly gifts for the gadget lovers and tech hounds in our lives:

LARQ Self Cleaning Water Bottle

Are there any two words better than "self cleaning"? A bottle that cleans itself? What wizardry is this? When I first heard about this I figured it had a tiny waterproof Roomba in it, but no, turns out it has a UV-C LED light in the inside cap to blast contaminants and other non-H2O particles out of there. Brilliant!

Nimble Hemp Wireless Phone Charger

Here's a very nifty gift idea --- a wireless phone charger from Nimble. The charger itself is made from hemp and recycled plastic, and all the packaging is made from biodegradable recycled paper --- even the inks used are water based. But perhaps the coolest bit is all Nimble products come with a recycled plastic bag and a prepaid mailing label so you can send off your old no-longer-used phones, cables, chargers and other electronics to their eWaste recycling partner for reclamation. They call this "closing the loop" on electronics waste, and it's a great idea.

Pocket Socket USB 1AMP

And speaking of chargers, the delightfully named Pocket Socket would be clutch to have in an emergency situation. This water-bottle sized hand crank can charge anything that uses a standard USB charger --- so basically everything. There's even some fancy tech in it that regulates the voltage you're generating to prevent accidental overloads.

House Of Marley Mini portable Bluetooth speaker

House Of Marley is an eco-friendly maker of music products like headphones, turntables and this very appealing mini Bluetooth speaker. The faceplate is made from bamboo, while the speaker housing is recycled plastic, hemp and reclaimed materials. Comes with a built-in microphone so you could use it as a speakerphone, along with an aux input to connect it to a turntable or TV. But beyond even that, the House Of Marley supports both the forest reforestation project One Tree Planted, and the ocean conservation Surfrider Foundation. So turn up that Bob Marley Spotify playlist.

A Good Mobile iPhone Case

The Swedish sustainable A Good Company has made a bold claim with this iPhone case --- the world's first climate-positive mobile case. Made with zero plastics, the case is 100% plant based materials, hand painted with organic paints, and produced in a factory using a mix of solar and hydropower. Sounds like they might want to change their name to A Great Company.TextNow

Yup, I'm including us in this list, and for good reason. Instead of throwing away your old phone whenever you upgrade, adding to our landfill waste problems, you could instead get one of our $4.99 SIM cards and repurpose that phone on our network, for free calling and texting anywhere in the US, to anywhere in the US or Canada, for the ultimate e-recycling.