Bamboo is one of the most environmentally friendly materials. It is a fast-growing grass, is harder than many plastics and as strong as some metals. (It's used as building scaffolding and baseball bats in Asia). Electronics? Not so much. That speaker you bought has a lot of plastic in it that's going to be around long after you've tossed it.

 

Originally a crowd-funded Kickstarter project, the iBamboo speaker is an attempt at solving the environmental problems associated with electronic accessories and offer up a cool iPhone speaker dock at the same time. It's basically a resonator, which amplifies the sound from the iPhone's built-in speakers. Simple physics: No batteries, no plastics, no silicon.

 

And for $25, it's economically sustainable, too.

 

(The Web site says that the speaker is temporarily out of stock, but you can register you email to get an update when more are avaialble.)

 

Each weekday on TechNewsDaily, That's Useful! finds practical new gadgets, computing hardware, apps and appliances that make sense and simply make life better.

 

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