Solar bra - new technology for conservation or a waste of resources?

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http://www.canada.com/ottawacitizen/news/story.html?id=04657dbc-62a9-4b9c-97d0-7685b8c92e84 Lingerie maker Triumph International Japan Ltd unveiled its environmentally friendly, and green coloured, "Solar Power Bra" on Wednesday in Tokyo. This bra is green in color, and features a solar panel that is worn around the stomach and when in the sun, will give enough electrical charge to power a cell phone or ipod. The article says that the bra is supposed to convey the message that lingerie could possibly help save the world. There are two problems though-- If you wear clothes over it, it won't work. And it can't be worn on a rainy day or washed. How stupid is that? First, who is going to go outside without a shirt on? Very few people, which makes the product useless. And since it can't be washed, after a month or so it's likely going to smell. The other thing that gets me about this is that this company wasted a ton of resources developing a product that can't be used by the average consumer, likely won't be sold in stores any time soon and in all actuality, will not do anything to promote eco-conservation. To produce something using valuable resources and then not be able to use it...isn't that the definition of waste? Whatever happened to reduce, reuse and recycle? These are basic concepts. Common sense, if you will. Reduce the amount of packaging in the products you buy, reuse things instead of tossing them out, don't waste unnecessarily, and recycle the items that can be recycled. How difficult is that? Instead, we're trying to reinvent the wheel and come up with all of these costly new concepts, most of which aren't going to do anything to help the environment and will ultimately actually cause more harm. David Suzuki wants all cars over 10 years old to be taken off the roads because he thinks older cars make up the bulk of air pollution. That's a nice idea, but when you consider that these older cars will be sitting in landfills and recycle scrap yards, polluting the ground and air and rusting away, AND that to make a brand new vehicle uses millions of gallons of fresh water, it's not such a sound idea. It's easy to spot the cars that have emissions problems. They're usually the ones belching out blue smoke and leaving a trail. Easy to spot, easy to get off the road. We're told to get rid of our old refrigerators and buy newer, more efficient models. Same concept--all of the old ones will be trashed and fill up the landfills. Instead of taking what we have and not wasting it, we're supposed to get rid of all our stuff and buy all brand new models, and just forget about the problem about where all this stuff goes. I'm sure the auto industry and economic sector have nothing to do with that, right? I'm sure there's no agenda to force us to buy all new stuff at inflated prices so we can all feel a little better about ourselves. Waste like this just pisses me off. All in the name of being trendy. I wish people would get their heads out of their butts and develop products that actually do some good instead of trivial crap that looks good in a photo, but does nothing to help the environment.