Green Dream: Citizen’s Promaster Navihawk Underlines the Importance of Environmental Sustainability

Every year, April is the time we celebrate Earth Month. But just because May is just around the corner, it doesn’t mean that we can’t keep making incremental changes to how we protect our planet.

Fortunately, in the watch sphere, brands like Citizen have always been committed to environmentally friendly initiatives. The best example of this is Citizen’s proprietary, light-powered Eco-Drive movement.

The brand released the world’s first light-powered analogue watch in 1976. In 2025, Citizen continues to push the boundaries of technology via three new Navihawks from the brand’s popular Promaster Air collection.

All Eco-Drive watches use a light-sensitive power cell to provide energy to the movement, which means that you need not wind it, nor do you have to change batteries. And no more battery changes means no more batteries ending up in the trash heap!

According to Citizen’s math, since the creation of Eco-Drive in 1976, more than 100 million batteries have been prevented from stacking up in landfills, the equivalent of more than 3,600 Mount Everest summits.
 

Beyond the obvious environmental repercussions, replacing batteries also costs in subtler, harder-to-quantify ways. With an Eco-Drive, you won’t have to travel to a jeweler or Citizen dealer as frequently for a battery replacement. Moreover, because opening up a watch causes wear and tear, the Eco-Drive movement offers better longevity to the rest of the timepiece.
 

The Eco-Drive’s functionality relies on a thin silicon disc beneath the dial that converts light to energy, storing it in a specialized energy cell. Typically, this solar cell can last over 20 years before needing replacement (and it can be easily replaced, meaning that these watches are far from disposable).
 

And finally, Citizen’s proprietary Eco-Drive technology converts any light source, from bright sunshine to dim indoor lighting, into the energy necessary to power the watch. This convenient energy source means a watch can run off a single full charge for over six months.

While Eco-Drive was born in the 1970s, Citizen is constantly fine-tuning the technology. This is most apparent in the latest Promaster Air Navihawk offerings.
 

This past February, the brand launched new models of this classic chronograph with a cleaned-up dial display and a slimmed-down case (reflecting the current trend for smaller watches by reducing the case diameter from 44mm and 48mm to a more practical and comfortable 40mm) that makes this highly functional workhorse feel much more refined. Some observers favorably compared these watches (priced under $600) to higher-end pieces from Breitling and TAG Heuer that would cost thousands.
 

That’s not the only aesthetic improvement: We are especially impressed by three new dial colors – silver, green, and salmon – with a sunray brushed dial and grey chrono sub-dials. The active seconds, the 24-hour clock, the 60-minute chronograph counter, and all of the regular Navihawk features are still present on the dial, but the new background options make the information pop.
 

As a nod to its aviation roots, these new Promaster Navihawk models also feature a nifty slide rule bezel that depicts airplane fuel. Additionally, the inner scale running along the flange could, at least hypothetically, prevent waste because it will calculate fuel usage over time and distance, given a known air speed.