Most visitors to Japan during the rainy season have noticed the variety of umbrella-drying devices placed at department store entrances; the most common is the one that slides a sort of plastic condom onto your umbrella in one swipe, and you may have seen seen a larger hairdryer-style contraption.

But the hairdryer one needs to be plugged in, and the condom-style umbrella wrapper will generate thousands of plastic bags that go into the trash. Annon's cool umbrella-drying device, on the other hand, requires no electricity and generates no waste; the film coating on the pie-slice-shaped sponges just squeegees the water off of your umbrella, draining it into a pan below.

Of course if you really wanted to be green, you would drink the water that accumulates in the pan, so it wouldn't go to waste either. But I guess that's kinda gross.

via dig info tv