WorldBeing wristband: The gadget made of recycled electronics that tracks your carbon footprint

It’s easy to forget the effect our disposable affair with tech can have on the environment

The new tracker concept is made entirely from recycled electronics (Getty Images)

Whatever happened to your old Windows 2000 desktop computer? Are you still hanging on to mobile phone handsets of the past? And what about the monolithic printer you chucked out in a zen-inspired fury?

Well, you might soon be wearing them on your wrist, if a new tracker concept made entirely from recycled electronics finds enough interest to get off the ground.

With the mortality rate of your iPhone set to approximately three years, and several new wearables promising to solve everything from sleepless nights to getting your two litres a day, it’s easy to forget the effect our disposable affair with tech can have on the environment. We’re abandoning our old tech to roadsides and landfills more than ever – to the tune of 20 to 50 million tonnes around the world each year.

But London designer Benjamin Hubert’s device, which was recently unveiled at this year’s London Design Festival, is not just a guilt-easing accessory. The new 5p bag plastic bag levy that hit supermarkets nationwide might be a small step to “greening up” our expenditure, but the new wearable concept is set to be a giant leap in exposing the ugly truth of your personal carbon consumption. Although still at a conceptual stage, the WorldBeing wristband plans to track a wearer’s carbon usage by connecting a variety of data sources to create individual maps of consumption, based on items purchased and food eaten, to modes of transport taken and energy used in the wearers’ home.

Checking into the app each morning will provide you with instant visual feedback on your daily carbon footprint using cloud-shaped graphics that change colour and size to indicate good and bad consumption. Think Jawbone for the modern eco-warrior.

We should each do our individual bit to save the planet, of course, but there are slightly selfish perks to cleaning up your act (other than the satisfaction that you aren’t melting glaciers or triggering tsunamis).

The wristband app plans to offer rewards, including badges and discounts at local businesses, whilst also encouraging you to better your individual green “score” by pitting you against other users.

The downside? Just one: insufferable carbon footprint bragging – inevitably coming soon to a social media platform near you.

Something else: Jawbone

In George Orwell’s 1984, The Party’s chief monitoring device, the telescreen, is so sensitive that it can detect the rapid beatings of a person’s rebellious heart.

While this isn’t quite on track with the reality of the mid-eighties, it’s not far off Jawbone’s planned developments for the next few years. The wearable tech company wants to create sensors you can swallow, and that can even be placed directly into your bloodstream. Big Brother, it seems, is watching.