The ECO-DRIVE is just the latest in green technology to come from Japan, that innovative island nation. It’s given the country a competitive advantage, a head start perhaps, in what will surely evolve to be one of the First World’s largest industries: cleaning up the mess that they created in the first place.
In an odd way, it’s been the Japanese who have, on the one hand, replaced battery technology in certain sectors such as the watch industry. On the other hand, however, firms such as Toyota have made breakthroughs in battery technology. This has had the consequence of increasing our dependence upon batteries and the harmful processes that go into their production. But that’s apparently the price we need to pay in order to shake our dependence upon oil.
Hopefully the analysis hasn’t gone too far afield, these musings on green Japanese technology and its impact upon worldwide demand for capacitors. Perhaps it can be condensed to the following: firms like Citizen are in the forefront of a rapidly developing field. The Japanese are transforming the manner in which we store and use energy. The innovations are moving us in a direction that’s far more respectful of the environment.
The capstone is that these efforts need to be recognised as those which are going to eventually spread to every manner of device. The fact that Citizen’s ECO-DRIVE exists in small Citizen Watches is probably insignificant in the total amount of waste that will be kept out of groundwater. But if you extrapolate that technology and apply it to a range of other devices–say, cell phones–the implications become far greater. Understanding that this is the likely direction of evolution will help catalyse its acceleration and adoption. Citizen’s helping to point and orient us along the right vector; it’s up to the consumer to recognise it and follow its lead.
