Now, onions to power your iPods!

A man found a unique way of saving electricity when charging his iPod - by using an onion soaked in energy drink. Read on...

A man found a unique way of saving electricity when charging his iPod - by using an onion soaked in energy drink.

Owen Louis, 21, who happens to be a music fan, was worried about the amount of electricity his MP3 player was using, and decided to use the vegetables to power up his device.

Louis' technique involved boring two holes in an onion, soaking it in an energy drink then sticking a USB cable into it, and device enables him to charge his iPod for an hour.

"I was watching TV with my laptop on and my iPod playing and thought, 'How much electricity must I be using?'" Metro.co.uk quoted him as saying.

"A friend showed me the experiment as a laugh but I thought it was the greatest thing I have ever seen, and do it religiously every day," he said.

Louis, from Portsmouth, said that the idea was a foolproof way of staying green as the onion decomposes and the drink bottle can be recycled once finished with.

Phil Stubbles, a physics lecturer from St Vincent College in Gosport, Hampshire, said that almost all vegetables could power iPods because they contain ions, which react with energy drinks to create a charge.

"The only problem is you have no control over how long it may work for ... and it can be smelly," he added.