If you’re brave/stupid enough to take your iPod, Blackberry, or PSP (seriously?) to a festival and can’t face queuing for nine hours to recharge it, then say hello to the FreeLoader from eco-supermarket Ecotopia.
Housed in an “impact-resistant, rust-free aluminium body”, the Freeloader is a small little thing and weighs about as much as a tube of toothpaste. While its solar-powered battery could take a while to get going in this rubbish excuse for a summer, it’s handy. It can simultaneously charge a device as well as itself via its internal cells or with its USB charge cable (a cheat, but a necessary one: it takes a cool five hours of light to charge fully.)

Once you’ve waved it in daylight for long enough, the FreeLoader can power an iPod for 18 hours, a PDA for 22 hours and a PSP for 2.5 hours, so if the music’s not your cup of tea you can entertain yourself until the next band comes on. And if you’re feeling retro and want to charge your mobile it’ll even give you 44 hours of phone time: always handy when you’ve lost everyone, again.
The FreeLoader costs £29.99 and you can get the full specs and get hold of one here.

Possibly related:

1. Solar powered festival backpack

2. Orange launches mobile wind charger at Glastonbury

3. Solar-powered teepee equipped with Wi-Fi: about as glampy as it gets

4. Glastonbury news round-up: Jay-Z wellies update, dance-powered mobile phone chargers, latest weather forecast

5. The eco-friendly VW Camper Van designed by Alexandre Verdier comes complete with optimistic solar panels

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Posted by Clare Joslin on Thursday August 2nd, 2007 at 2:32 pm