Obsessable had the opportunity to attend the Greener Gadgets 2009 conference on Friday and we'll be trickling out some posts today from the event. If you were interested in attending and didn't get a chance, you can view something similar to the keynote talk by Dr. Saul Griffith embedded below, as it was a slight variation on his Scarcity and Abundance talk from Pop!Tech 2008 where Wattzon was launched. Wattzon is, quite simply, "a free online tool to quantify, track, compare and understand the total amount of energy needed to support all of the facets of your lifestyle." If you already use financial tracking site Wesabe, Wattzon recently launched a collaboration with Wesabe via which you can track the energy consumption of your spending.

The talk is definitely interesting, as it takes an almost obsessive compulsive look at individual energy consumption in comparison to the national average and the world average and looks at how much energy one would need to produce per year to counteract the amount of energy one uses. Some of the more interesting ideas in the talk include both the tracking of your energy consumption that is made possible in part thanks to sites like Wattzon and the idea of heirloom gadgets: pieces of technology that could be handed down from generation to generation like a Mont Blanc pen or a Rolex watch.

While it is definitely an interesting idea, most of the people I spoke to at the conference seemed to agree that until we hit some sort of technological plateau of innovation, we're still too caught up in the technology revolution for any such gadget to emerge and succeed. However, on the other end of the spectrum from heirloom gadgets, there was a lot of talk at the conference about recycling gadgets (especially cellphones which tend to have a 2 year life cycle and then are discarded even though the devices still work) and designing non-throwaway versions of less high-tech gadgets that are currently rather disposable because most current manufacturers design them as specialty items or for limited use (like flashlights and solar- / crank-powered radios). Make sure you watch the video below and tell us what you think in the comments.

Here's the video: