Thanks To Ikea, Your Coffee Will Charge Your Phone In The Future

Coffee is a morning addiction for many of us. While lots of sleep SHOULD be the thing that powers up our proverbial batteries, a caffeine jolt is the power source many of us rely on to get through the day. Soon, however, you and your phone may be able to charge up on coffee. Well, sort of. While you’ll still be getting energy from caffeine, your phone and other devices could charge from the heat of your morning brew. That’s the idea behind Heat Harvest, a mock-up design from two Copenhagen design students. Used alone or incorporated into a table top, Heat Harvest would capture the energy from objects that give off heat (like your cup of joe, a bowl of soup, or even your laptop) and then charge tech devices placed on top of it wirelessly. Sound like the stuff of science fiction? Not really — that kind of technology, called thermoelectric energy, already exists. Scientists have already tinkered with using thermoelectric energy for a couple years, as Smithsonian reports, including a sleeping bag that harnesses body heat to charge phones. This latest design is part of an IKEA-sponsored challenge to create sustainable objects for urban living. An easy solution to our perennially low phone battery that's also green? We’d love to have a Heat Pad of our own one day. Would it be too much to hope we could grab one the next time we’re stocking up on Swedish meatballs and Poang chairs?