This is one of those green inventions that captures energy.

Invented by four engineers from Harvard University, the soccer ball harvests energy created from impacts.

The sOccket has a built-in inductive coil that collects kinetic energy.

After about 15 minutes of kicking the ball around it will produce enough electricity to light an LED flashlight for 3 hours.

There is a need for inexpensive green inventions that provide off-grid energy solutions for developing regions such as Africa.

In most African countries there is no access to electricity and more than a billion people around the world rely entirely on kerosene to light their homes.

Jessica Lin, along with co-inventors, Hemali Thakker, Julia Silverman and Jessica Matthews have received grants, including funding from the Clinton Global Initiative University, to develop a prototype of their invention.

"Soccer is in every African country, so we thought, why not try to get a little more out of that energy," says Lin.

Their hoping to have the sOccket available for distribution by the end of this year.

Sources: nytimes.com; soccket.com

Clean Water

The tragic loss of lives from the lack of safe drinking water in the aftermath of the tsunami in Indonesia and the hurricane in Louisana, motivated inventor Micheal Pritchard to find a solution.

After developing many prototypes, he designed an innovative handheld water purification device that creates fresh water instantly.

The LifeSaver bottle removes bacteria, viruses, parasites, fungi and all micorobiological pathogens from contaminated water without the use of chemicals and lasts for years with very little maintenance.

Accepted for use by military forces, Lifesaver has also received a technological development award for it's effectiveness.

Source: lifesaversystems.com

Recycling Paper

Sawa Hiroshi is an engineer employed by the Oriental Development Company in Japan.

"Global warming is a serious environmental problem and we wanted to develop an eco-friendly recycling product," says the 37 year-old inventor.

"We wanted zero-emissions and something that was economical and would contribute to conservation."

Funded by Oriental Development and Sanko Electronics, Sawa focused his efforts on a green invention that would recycle waste paper. He invented a small-scale recycling machine that converts waste paper into toilet paper.

Paper is thrown into a hopper and the machine untangles, shreds and uses hot water to dissolve the paper into a pulp.

The machine then automatically adjusts the consistency of the pulp, removes any foriegn particles, dries and compresses it into sheets and rolls it into toilet paper that exits out the other end.

It takes about 30 minutes to make a roll and each one is made with the equivalent of 40 sheets of standard size office paper.

Over a period of a year the machine would save about 60 cedar trees.

This green invention, affectionately named the "White Goat", has already won awards for innovation and is expected to be available for distribution later this year.

Source: orikankyou.com