The cell phone towers are in today’s society a valuable service and you can pretty much find a tower anywhere you go. Yet they look like trash and people can go into legal battles if a company tries to put one nearby their homes.

Now Ericsson have introduced a more aesthetic pleasing cell phone tower called the “Ericsson Tower Tube“. It is designed by the Scandinavian architect Thomas Sandell. The tower tube is, just like it name says, a simple and hollow flexible concrete tower that replaces current steel structures entirely.

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The MacBook Air is Apple’s latest work of art. It’s slim and looks awesome. But what about the laptops green credentials then? Is it greener than the iMac?

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This year Dell, the computer maker, will be 100% carbon neutral. They will become carbon neutral by buying carbon reductions. While it’s not the best way to go green it is the fastest and simplest way at the moment. You could see it as a big first step towards a more sustainable second step. One thing is for sure. Dell is trying to take the green lead in the computer world.

Michael Dell, the company’s chairman and CEO, says that “never before in the history of business have we seen such a critical need to build a worldwide community dedicated to improving the environment.” He continued by saying that “leadership starts at home, which is why we [Dell] are going carbon-neutral, but this should only be the beginning of building long-term partnerships with customers, stakeholders and suppliers of all sizes to team up and make a difference for the Earth we all share.”

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Nokia recently released its brand new 3110 Evolve. It’s a new, greener, phone from Nokia (maybe they wanted to impress Greenpeace?).

The new phone uses “bio-covers” that, are said, to be made from over 50% renewable material. It also uses smaller packaging made of 60% recycled content. Nokia have also thrown in their best energy efficient charger. The charger uses 94% less energy than the Energy Star requirements.

If you are in the need for a new phone this one might be worth to take a closer look at. But please, do not throw away your already working phone.

It wasn’t long ago since Western Digital teamed up with Kanguru in marketing a green hard drive for consumers and businesses. Now Western Digital is releasing a 500GB “green” hard drive that uses 30 percent less power than other hard drives.

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Today Greenpeace released its latest version of their Guide to Greener Electronics. In this version they added TV and game console makers. Before we check out the changes from last version lets see how some of the newly added companies rank in the Guide.

Nintendo, one of the new companies, has become the first company to score zero points out of max ten, not a good start for a company that mainly has children as their target group. Microsoft does a little better than Nintendo, about 2.7 points better. Another low-scorer is Philips, the TV maker, who only scores two points.

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Dell is the first PC manufacturer to achieve Energy Star 4.0 requirements with its new Inspiron 531. Some of its features are a 80% efficient power supply and a paperless owners manual. The computer is also pre-programmed to switch to a low-power sleet state after 15 minutes of inactivity.

Dell Inspiron 531 comes with an AMD Athlon-64 X2 dual-core processor, 1GB of DDR2 memory, 160GB hard drive, CD-RW/DVD-ROM combo drive, nVidia integrated graphics and Windows Vista Home Basic as operating system.

EPA, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, estimates that with the latest update of Energy Star requirements only the top 25% of energy-efficient computers will qualify Energy Star 4.0.

Post A Phone is a 4mm thick phone made out of recyclable card or plastic. It is designed by Priestman Goode and I love it.

The Post A Phone is intended to be a backup phone when all your other more high tech solutions have failed. The phone fits inside an A5 envelope and can be sent via regular post (yes, the snail mail).

I am not so sure how it is in your country but here in Sweden most people uses IP telephones and/or mobile phones. It’s rare that people only use a ordinary (and old) landline. I personally use Skype and my mobile phone when I am outside or not next to a computer. The Post A Phone would be perfect for those times when the Internet breaks down and when you don’t want to waste money on expensive mobile calls.

So when will the phone, sorry, the Post A Phone come to Sweden?

Here is a neat little green computer called DecTop. The computer runs on only 8 watts. Yes, you heard right and yes, 8 watts is nothing! You can compare that with my CPU processor who needs around 45 watts to work.

But of course this low power drain has some downsides. DecTop comes with 128MB memory, a 10GB harddrive and a 366 MHz processor. Not much to brag about. But if you are only browsing, checking your emails or RSS feeds and doing some small amount of writing this computer is enough for you.

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Lenovo recently released the ThinkCentre A61e, a brand new green computer. The ThinkCentre A61e uses few hazardous materials, consumes little power and is easy to recycle. Because of that it has received the desirable EPEAT Gold status.

Peter Schrady with the really long title of vice president and general manager, Emerging Products Business Unit says that “the importance of maximizing energy efficiency and being environmentally conscious is touching all aspects of our daily lives, from the light bulbs we use to light our homes to the hybrid cars we drive to the green technology we rely on to run our businesses.”

Un-customized it uses an AMD Sempron LE 1150 processor, 512MB ATI Radeon X1200, 512MB Memory, 80GB hard drive and costs $399. Not too shabby. Sure the computer is ugly (or shall we say retro?) but it’s still one of the more high performing green computers out there.

According to Lenovo using the energy-efficient AMD Athlon X2 dual core and AMD Sempron single core processors can help save up to 50 percent in energy costs annually.

Another good thing is that Lenovo ranks high in the Green Electronics Guide from Greenpeace. They are currently on the 4th place being beaten only by Dell (on third place).

Press Release: Lenovo Raises Energy-Efficiency Bar with Its Smallest, Quietest Desktop PC