Eco-friendly company Gotwind has teamed up with UK-based company Orange to create an energy efficient way of charging your phone: Power Wellies. Think of it as a rain boot with an electrical outlet, except instead of actually being powered up by an outlet, your phone is charged by converting the temperature of your feet — or thermoelectric modules — into electric voltage. Although the process sounds more complicated then just slipping a pair of boots on, that’s really all you have to do in order to get some charge into your cell phone. The technology was developed with England’s Glastonbury festival in mind, hence the whole rain boot thing. What’s the catch? Well, in order to get an hours use out of your cell, you’d have to have worn the boots for about 12 hours. At first glance I initially thought these boots were a genius idea, but I have so many questions, first and foremost being….why would you put a cell phone in a rain boot when you’re wearing those boots in the rain? Ok, so I suppose you just wouldn’t wear the boots in the rain, but then you’d look like the town fool wearing rain boots when it isn’t raining. Well, apart from this minute detail, I think I’m more bothered by the fact that they were developed for a music festival when I naively believed that the whole point of going to a music festival was to listen to the music and participate in being at the festival as opposed to gabbing on your cell phone. Maybe I’m just old school though. All in all, I can’t be too harsh on a technology that is working to remove a bit of the world’s carbon footprint, coincidentally through a shoe. Plus, I’m sure this is just the first of many more, and even further improved, eco-friendly technological advances from Gotwind.

Check out another shot of the boots in action and a picture of a foot pump charger after the Jump…