Out with the old, in with the Solarbox

It's a blustery Autumn day in London's busy city centre. Big red buses carry hordes of shoppers up and down the congested thoroughfares of Oxford Street and Tottenham Court Road. And there standing still, in amongst the crowded rush of pedestrians with faces glued to their phones, is one of London's famous red phone boxes positioned. Only this one's got an unusual flare.

Second Life

An estimated 8,000 of the iconic red symbols of the UK's capital are completely unused. But now, these phone boxes are getting a second life with the help of a green makeover.

It's called the Solarbox - a bright green, free to use, solar-powered charging station for mobile phones and other gadgets. It is being used by locals, photographed by tourists and has been praised as the kind of start-up that will keep London at the forefront of future technology.

The Solarbox is London's very first - and so far only - of its kind. University students Kirsty Kenney and Harold Craston came up with the idea, which Kirsty says is more than just about saving the iconic red phone box from redundancy: "This has always been about public space and how we can reclaim public spaces and make them for the public again. This is essentially about the provision of power as a public good, that's the key motivation behind this. The fact that we can do that in an environmentally friendly way is amazing."

Ambitious aim

Their concept is just the kind of green initiative that London needs to achieve its goal of becoming the world's greenest city by 2020. With a custom-made rooftop solar panel, the solarbox can charge different gadgets including smart phones, tablets and cameras. And it's free to use.

The creators won £5,000 in this year's Mayor of London Low Carbon Prize competition, a student competition encouraging ideas to reduce London's energy use and carbon emissions.

Matthew Pencharz, the Mayor's Environment and Energy Adviser, and one of the competition judges, says he wants to see Solarboxes become part of the London landscape. "I think we were particularly taken by the way that Solarbox put forward an idea which was going to rejuvenate an iconic bit of London's urban street scene. I wonder how many phone calls are made out of the red telephone boxes these days? They'll probably get a lot more use as a solarbox," Pencharz says.

Future outlook

Currently the Solarbox is not that famous amongst Londoners: Around 60-80 people are using it everyday. But are initiatives like these, partly funded by the mayor's office, actually making the capital city greener?

London may be aiming for greenest city by 2020, but it still has a long way to go. Air quality in London is among the worst in Europe, and just recently Oxford Street was said to have some of the world's highest recorded levels of concentration of nitrogen dioxide, a toxic pollutant that can trigger asthma and heart attacks.

Jenny Bates, from environmental group Friends of the Earth, is skeptical: "The Mayor's office has got several good initiatives and having competitions like that can only be good. But the bigger picture is that he's failing on his own targets for cutting climate changing emissions. Things are happening but just not strong and fast enough."

Matthew Pencharz, however, disagrees on that opinion: "No other city in the world is doing anything close to the amount of action the Mayor is taking. People can say 'you've got to do more' but they should put in the context of 'no one else is doing as much as this'."

With just one Solarbox in London so far, its creators want to see another ten green boxes rolled out by 2015, and several placed in London's tube stations by 2016. But first they need to find investors. For now, the Solarbox on Tottenham Court Road is giving London's iconic phone box a new green face and giving Londoners a taste of some free solar energy.