According to site owners Brycelaine Self and Colby Self, “The site is an evolving project aimed to inform and inspire. We update the site daily based on our continued research and your feedback.” The owners credentials are as follows…

Brycelaine is a Principal of Eco-innovations, along with expertise in economics, sustainable product innovation and environmental stewardship program management. She is a LEED Accredited Professional and an ENERGY STAR partner and home verifier. Colby is also a Principal of Eco-innovations and has experience in environmental policy and socio-economics. He’s also an ENERGY STAR partner and home verifier, and EPEAT and WaterSense partner liaison.

I checked out the site and they have an extensive area dedicated to how they rate and product criteria, which is nice. It’s shocking how many green sites who review products fail to offer this basic info. There’s a news and forum section (not too busy yet), along with a nice eco-dictionary. The reviews vary in length, but some are very in-depth and there’s enough reviews posted that it’d be easy to visit Eco-rate and choose some products. To give you an idea review areas look like the image below…

I like that they show how far away the product is made – that’s cool and makes you think about how big a footprint you really want. Plus consumers can leave their own reviews too.

If you’re looking to buy some green products for your home, I’d check out Eco-rate and see if you can learn more before buying.

I recently saw this kooky little creation – The Energy Tree. While it’s odd for sure, it’s a pretty cool idea.

The Energy Tree was a project developed for Microsoft’s StartSomthing PC Competition by Ben Arent, a UK Product & Interaction Designer. His portfolio is pretty neat, with many cool designs to see but this project might be the most useful dream product for green home dwellers.

Basically Arent designed the Energy tree as an “All in one device to view energy use in the home, and improve the overall energy life-cycle.” The Energy Tree, in theory, monitors power consumption and recycling use. A product like this would serve to help humans become more aware of their energy use at home, or I suppose in an office setting.

The Energy Tree has a user interface for displaying information about energy consumption. According to Arent, “The Energy Tree will grow a real tree… if you are energy efficient, but if you waste energy it will start to get a disease and or die.”

For folks saying – “This concept is crazy, it will never work!” Arent answers some questions here.

So, if something like this was on the market, would you be interested? I think it’s pretty cool. I like the whole tree metaphor. It’s a nice visual for energy use.