Good news from ZNet, The major manufacturers have agreed to standardize their chargers. This will hopefully reduce plastic waste as phones can be shipped without including a charger.

The adoption of Micro-USB as a common standard has several advantages for users and the industry, the GSM Association (GSMA) said. In particular, it allows manufacturers to stop shipping a new charger with every handset, and it lets buyers avoid the need to have multiple chargers for different devices.

I was a bit surprised to read that the slots are only robust enough to hold up to 10,000 insertions. Sure, you can plug your phone into the charger every night for over 27 years, but what if a toddler sees you doing it one evening and decides to entertain himself by inserting the charger over and over again? Stuff needs to be more durable. I guess the companies want you to buy another phone sooner rather than later anyway.

If you need to buy a phone between now and when the standardization takes effect in three years, look for a phone with a Micro-USB slot.

I hope the standardization will provide some kind of benefit to people who are working on things like solar chargers. Don’t waste money and plastic by buying any of the less than stellar solar chargers that are already available. GreenLAgirl recently reviewed a slick looking solar charger that simply put wasn’t good enough. If you live in a very sunny US location, you should head over to her blog now and comment to qualify for her giveaway. The Solio100 comes with multiple nibs to fit a variety of devices. I wouldn’t buy one of these, but it seems like the best use for it would be to leave it on the dash of the car that I don’t have for those times when I forget the car charger that I don’t have for the various devices that I don’t have. If anyone has a really good solar charger for multiple devices please feel free to comment.