The green home of the future will not only waste less water and energy, it’ll be a lot more convenient to operate thanks to smart features that are either automated, or controllable using our mobile phones. These 12 intriguing inventions give us a glimpse at what appliances and gadgets might b featured in an eco-friendly house within a decade or two – and some are already available!
Xeros Waterless Washing Machine
Waterless washing machines are already a reality with Xeros, which uses a unique absorption system to drastically cut back the amount of water used to get a load of laundry clean. No, it’s not technically altogether ‘waterless’, since you need one cup per load; the dirty water is absorbed by plastic chips, eliminating the need for a rinse cycle. But a cup is nothing compared to how much water many machines use.
Nano Garden
Grow herbs and vegetables right in your kitchen with an attractive tiered appliance featuring climate-controlled panels, built-in lighting and even an attachment to a water source, making it all-in-one. Since light, water, fertilization and temperature can be controlled in each individual tier, you can grow all kinds of thing that would normally be tough to care for in a basic windowsill garden.
Steam Dishwasher
Dishwashers are bulky, and they use an awful lot of water. This concept for The Eco-Friendly Steam Dishwasher is so small, it’ll fit on your countertop, and it uses pressurized steam to blast food particles off dishes and utensils and sanitize them. The best part is, it requires no detergents at all. The water is collected and filtered using ‘membrane technology’ to remove all the grime, and recycled for use again in the next load. Fresh water is brought in periodically.
Zero-Energy Bio-Gel Refrigerator
Okay, this is a bit of a weird one: a refrigerator that uses a special gel-like substance to suspend and cool foods. A transparent panel lets you see your fruits, fish, butter and whatever else you keep in your fridge hanging out in non-sticky, odorless green goo. The gel is full of ‘bio robot’ cooling agents to preserve the food, so it doesn’t need to be plugged in. Could you get used to this?
Portable Washing Machine
When you only get a little bit of dirt on a shirt, blanket or other textile, it seems like a waste to have to wash the whole thing. This Portable Washing Machine gadget can be placed over targeted areas like an iron to steam out soil. It’s powered by a high-density sugar battery.
Green Smart Glass
Don’t you hate it when you’re dying to take a sip of your coffee, but it’s still too hot to drink? The Green Smart Glass draws some of that heat out of the coffee through the inner wall of the mug, and converts it into electricity that can later be used for other purposes.
Bediator Bed and Radiator in One
Why constantly heat spaces that you’re not even using? At night, you could concentrate heat in the place you need it most – your bed – with the Bediator, an innovative bed platform that’s also a radiator. The best part is, it’ll also circulate cool air in the summer. It features a calendar, built-in alarm clock and thermometer, and folds up when not in use.
Green Cuisine Healthy Cooking Modules
In the future, you might not have to think too hard about preparing healthy meals, even when you’re short on time and don’t want to deal with messy cleanup. Philips Design presents ‘Green Cuisine‘, an integrated coking solution with gadgets built into kitchen surfaces that will cook, steam, and automate energy expenditure to save as much energy as possible. Interactive touch screens appear on countertops and table surfaces for easy control of all your cooking appliances.
Smart Shower
Here’s a cool idea for a shower that wastes far less water than conventional shower designs, without leaving you in the cold. The water automatically starts when you’re standing under the showered, and stops when you’re not – but if you want to pause it just long enough to lather up, shave or do other tasks that don’t require a full stream of water, it’ll send out a cloud of steam to keep you warm. There’s a touch-screen so you can choose the exact water temperature you like, plus it monitors water usage and saves the information. It even has built-in speakers with Bluetooth and wifi so you can stream music from your smartphone into the shower.
Ultrasonic Clothes Dryer
Not only does this clothes dryer design eliminate the need to bend over while loading and unloading laundry, it uses an ultrasonic atomizer system instead of a conventional electric heater system to blast the water out of clothes. The mist formed during the drying process can be cooled and collected for use in the washing machine.
Cooker EMS: Energy-Harvesting Bracelets
Wear these weird little bracelets around your wrists for a few hours, and they’ll transform your body heat and kinetic energy into energy that can be used for cooking. Either slip the bracelet around a mug to heat up a beverage, or roll it out into a flat heating pad.
White Goat Toilet Paper Machine
It doesn’t come cheap, but there’s a machine you can purchase that actually turns office paper into toilet paper, so you never need to worry about running out again. And when we say it doesn’t come cheap, we mean the White Goat toilet paper machine costs an astounding $100,000. Maybe this bulky and expensive machine won’t be a fixture in most homes anytime soon, but it presents an intriguing solution to the problem of cutting down so many trees for toilet paper.

