The familiar red phone boxes of London have taken a bit of a battering in recent decades, but some will be given new life with a little help from solar power.
Originally introduced in 1926, the red phone boxes numbered 73,000 throughout the United Kingdom at their peak in 1980.
The rise of the mobile phone was a death knell for the cabinets and fewer than 11,000 of them remain today – most losing money and some in a state of neglect.
The solarbox project is transforming disused telephone boxes into free solar powered charging stations for handheld devices – and the first was put into operation yesterday at Tottenham Court Road Station.
As well as being green in colour, the box is also green on power; with a flexible solar panel installed on the top to generate electricity.
The solarbox will be open to the public between the hours of 5:30am – 11:30pm, 365 days a year.
Kirsty Kenney and Harold Craston, the pair behind the concept, won £5,000 and mentoring support as runners-up in the Mayor’s 2014 Low Carbon Entrepreneur competition earlier this year; which enabled them to bring the concept to fruition. More solarbox installations will pop up around the city in the time ahead.
While using solarbox is free, costs are covered through advertising space inside the booth.
“In our modern world, where hardly any Londoner is complete without a raft of personal electronic gizmos in hand, it’s about time our iconic phone boxes were updated for the 21st Century, to be more useful, more sustainable, and just as striking with a marvellous new green makeover,” said the Mayor of London, Boris Johnson.
“As London’s low carbon economy grows, it’s new start-ups like this, with our funding and support, that are keeping London at the forefront of future technology.”
Phone box trivia – the paint colour used on the red phone boxes is known as “currant red” and is even defined by a British Standard, BS 381C-539. Some of the traditional boxes are also in use in some current or former British colonies.
