Can Roxen’s ‘electric watercraft’ challenge the Jet Ski?
Make waves
It looks like a Jet Ski, you ride it like a Jet Ski – but it’s electric, so it won’t disturb anyone nearby who was hoping for a peaceful afternoon by the water. Making a horrible racket is usually part and parcel of the Jet Ski experience, but Sweden-based Roxen is suggesting an alternative: instead of spending an hour burning 10 litres of fuel and upsetting the local wildlife (not to mention human beings), why not hop on a super-light craft that’s unusually quiet, powered by a 5.25 kWh battery, and yet can reach speeds of 55kph?
Roxen Electric Watercraft
Price: $19,900
“It’s officially registered as a ‘recreational watercraft’,” explains Roxen’s Isak Hemmingsson, noting with a smile that the term Jet Ski is trademarked by Kawasaki. “A normal Jet Ski is very heavy, minimum 200kg, usually more like 300kg,” he says. “This weighs roughly 60kg without the battery.” Weight was Roxen’s primary concern during the design process; its founders come from the world of aerospace and drones, so the maxim was “every gram counts”. Rather than scale down a Jet Ski, early mock-ups featured an electric surfboard with a seat, using rigid inflatables to keep it as light as possible – which in turn makes for more responsive handling. A touchscreen instrument panel shows speed and battery life, and there are smart geofencing options for extra safety and security.
The lower weight makes for easier transportation. No trailer needed – two people can easily lift it on to the roof of a car – and no dock or boat ramp is required to launch it, so you can access places that other watercraft can’t reach. “We recently rode for a while on a lake in the French Alps that we’d never have reached with a trailer,” says Hemmingsson. “And of course there are a growing number of lakes across Europe [and beyond] where petrol watercrafts are forbidden.”
Roxen has tried to source as many materials as possible from within Sweden, including the hull, seat and fabric. Shorter supply chains, less pollution and less noise pollution all make for a greener vehicle, priced to compete with a mid-to-premium combustion Jet Ski. Just don’t call it a Jet Ski.
Grow your own
Auk Mini 2.0
Price: from £199
This Norwegian indoor smart garden was created partly to make people think more about the store-bought herbs we collectively throw away (one piece of research by Samsung says “more than half”, which tallies with my own anecdotal evidence). The first iteration looked a little like a school science experiment, but the V2.0 is more refined, with the three-litre water tank hidden behind an FSC-certified wooden tray. Stuff the four pots with the supplied coconut fibre, then sow your seeds – basil and parsley come in the package, but other herbs and flowers will do well. You can even purchase additional larger pots to grow chilli or tomato plants. Fill the tank with water, add some squirts of nutrients (also supplied), and set the height of the USB-powered LED light bar at around 15cm above the pots. Then you wait. The lights brighten and dim to replicate day and night; you just have to keep tabs on the water indicator and occasionally raise the LED bar as the plants grow. Your harvest is but a month (or so) away.
Take charge
Krafted Edge
Price: £149.99
While laptops slip neatly into a sleeve, the power banks designed to keep them juiced on the move are annoyingly bulky and four-square. The Edge breaks that trend: it’s an ultra-slim 20,000mAh power bank that sits unobtrusively underneath your machine while charging it via USB-C (the cable stores in a slot in the side when not in use). Its eco credentials can be discovered by removing eight screws on the chassis; inside are four removable inlaid cells that Krafted will replace for around £45 – this is in stark contrast to sealed power banks that are destined for landfill once their efficiency begins to decline. Made of ocean-bound plastic and aluminium, it’ll give you around a day’s charge (depending on what you’re using the laptop for), with extra USB-C and USB-A ports should you wish to charge anything else.
Floss prevention
Flaus Electric Flosser
Price: $119
You’d be hard pushed to describe flossing as fun, exciting or addictive. But having spent a week or so with the Flaus, there’s definitely something about having a dedicated flossing device that motivates you to do it more regularly. It’s similar in form to an electric toothbrush, with a soft-touch silicone handle and recyclable heads, each with a small piece of floss strung across. Sonic vibrations move the floss from side to side; choose from one of three speeds (sadly it doesn’t remember your favourite between flossings) and thereafter it’s about getting the hang of angling the floss between the teeth. But that doesn’t take long, and it’s certainly much easier to reach your molars this way. Its main eco credential is the vastly reduced amount of floss you end up using – Flaus estimates 95 per cent less, while giving us the sober reminder that “every piece of dental floss ever used still exists in the world today”.
Razor thin
Razer Atlas Pro
Price: £129.99
Having worn my way through multiple synthetic mouse mats over the years – all of which have ended up in landfill – my duty is surely to switch to something more durable. This is the ultimate glass mouse mat, currently the thinnest in the world, with a 1.1mm glass layer and a slender rubber base keeping the whole thing down to 1.9mm in height. As it’s made by Razer it’s tailored for gaming with rounded edges, an ultra-smooth surface and a micro-etched texture to give reliable and incredibly accurate tracking. It’s scratch resistant to everyday objects – coins, pens, carelessly flung bunches of keys – and wipes down very easily. You’re not going to need to replace it in a hurry, but when you do, it’s good to know that it’s made from a material that isn’t classed as a pollutant.
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