Trendspotting at NYC's Green Products Expo

From time to time, we at ConsumerSearch are invited to events that allow manufacturers big and small to showcase their goods to the press. At Wednesday's Green Products Expo in New York City, we didn't see too much that was groundbreaking, but a few products caught our eye. Will any of them end up in your home?

Recycled plastics, sustainable materials

A handful of manufacturers are touting new or re-engineered products that use recycled plastic or other sustainable substances in packaging. A couple highlights:

• Scotch, the 3M subsidiary that introduced the ubiquitous Scotch Magic Tape 50 years ago, is celebrating the anniversary by introducing Magic Eco-Friendly Tape. The tape adhesive contains plant-based derivatves, and the dispenser and tape cores are made with recycled plastic. Interestingly, the tape itself is not made with recycled materials. The Magic Tape is new this month, so reviews have yet to filter in, so we can't yet say how well it compares to conventional Scotch tape and competing tapes.

• Green cleaning products company Ecover is touting its forthcoming Zero line of cleaning products -- including laundry detergent, dishwasher powder and tablets -- which contain no dyes, fragrances, phosphates or optical brighteners. This line of products, due in stores in late summer, is packaged in what the company dubs Plantplastic (or Plant-astic, if you're in the U.K.), which is made from sugar cane.

• Competitor Ecos is introducing DuoDish, a biodegradable, pH-neutral dish detergent that can be used either to hand-wash dishes or in the dishwasher. DuoDish is available at select retailers and online, including Amazon.com, but reviews are still too few to draw conclusions about its effectiveness.

• Tired of using disposable paper towels and sponges? California-based Skoy Enterprises is showing off their Skoy Cloths, machine-washable, biodegradable cloths made of cotton and wood-pulp cellulose. Company reps say each cloth can replace 15 rolls of paper towels. Just a handful of users have rated Skoy Cloths at Amazon.com, and happy owners say the cloths are absorbent, dry quickly and are easy to launder. We did find a few negative reviews, but they were about price, not performance.

Green in the kitchen

Unlike the International Home and Housewares Show, which we attended last month, there wasn't much in the way of cookware and kitchen products at the Green Products Expo. A couple of the notable items:

• Full Circle, which makes a number of eco-oriented household cleaning products, is introducing two kitchen compost collectors, the Fresh Air Kitchen Compost Collector and the Scrap Happy freezer bin. These products aren't designed to do the actual composting; rather, they're intended to store food and organic waste -- like produce scraps, coffee grounds, pet hair, paper plates and eggshells -- until you can take them to your backyard or community compost pile. Both products are too new to have earned user reviews yet, but we'll keep an eye on them when we update our report on compost bins.

• In the past several years, a number of cookware manufacturers have introduced nonstick pans that eschew the use of perfluorooctanoic acid (PFOA) or polytetrafluoroethylene (PTFE), two controversial chemicals used to manufacture the cooking surface coatings. Belgian cookware maker GreenPan handed out samples of its 8-inch pro-grade GreenPan Copenhagen frying pan, which uses a mineral-based nonstick substance called Thermolon. We couldn't find any reviews for this particular skillet model, but user feedback for other GreenPan cookware at HSN.com and the Shopping Channel, as well as a discussion thread at Chowhound.com, give the line mixed reviews for performance. As we note in our report on skillets, green nonstick coatings often don't hold up as well as Teflon and similar surfaces that use PFOA or PTFE.
  

Unusual or useful?

Every trade show has a few vendors that tout new and unusual products, and the Green Products Expo was no exception. We'll be testing a few of the products in future blog posts, including:

• Purely Products' Pocket Purifier, a handheld ultraviolet sanitizing wand. There are a number of similar UV sanitizers on the market, and while UV light has been proven to kill germs, the Los Angeles Times expresses some skepticism about the effectiveness of these devices.

• Eco Geek Living's LED Shake Flashlight, a handheld flashlight that runs on power generated by being shaken. You can read about similar hand-powered flashlights in our report.

• Sanyo eneloop's Mobile Booster, a rechargeable USB power source for mobile devices like iPods, cell phones and handheld gaming devices. While we haven't reviewed this particular type of mobile device charger, Sanyo eneloop rechargeable batteries are named a Best Reviewed product in our report on batteries.