Living green starts with the little things, such as turning off the TV when you leave the house or not running the water as you brush your teeth. So why not go back to basics on your computer setup, and try a solar-powered mouse?

A research group in the Netherlands has created the Sole Mio, which it claims to be the “world’s first exclusively photovoltaic-powered computer mouse.” The Sole Mio is currently in trials to determine whether regular use is enough to charge the mouse.

Though the mouse can get some charge from artificial light, the real challenge is whether computer users will be willing to stop working long enough in the day to throw the mouse under some real sunlight to be charged. The group estimates that with solar-powered mice, “several hundred million batteries could be saved annually on a global scale.”

There are some things in life that people have but hope they’ll never need, like pepper spray, accident insurance, or a copy of The Villain. But how about something that you hope will tell you you don’t need it?

Cambridge, Mass.-based Ambient Devices, whose motto is “Information everywhere” and lives up to it by producing things like Internet-connected refrigerators and colorful stock-market indicators has developed the $140 Ambient Umbrella — an umbrella with a radio receiver in the handle that gets weather data from Accuweather.com. If rain is expected in the next twelve hours, the handle glows; depending on the type of rain expected, the light pulses at different frequencies.

Now if they could just build something into the handle so I’d stop forgetting umbrellas on the train, I’d be all set.