O.K., you may question whether a green gadget even exists. Each year planned obsolescence, innovation, fashion and the massive corporate marketing machine all push billions of units of ‘old’ PDA’s, cellphones, MP3 players, video games and associated tech-junk into the landfill. Be that as it may, gadgets are only growing in both popularity and ubiquity, thus it’s become imperative to design, manufacture…and yes shop for them, with their green quotient in mind.

Core77 is conducting a green design competition to coincide with the Greener Gadgets Conference at the McGraw-Hill Conference Center in NYC. The one day conference is on Feb. 1.

Entries for the design competition opened on 12/26/07 and run through 1/27/08. There’s a $2,500 first prize and two $1,000 runner-up awards. Designs will be judged on innovation, clarity of design, originality, form, presentation…and of course green-ness.

Just remember to either give your “old gadget” to someone who will use it, or recycle it properly.