Saving the Environment, One App at a Time
If there’s one thing that all of us can agree upon in this age of divisiveness, it’s this: we can all benefit from being more environment-friendly. If you’re not sure where to start or how exactly to go about being more eco-conscious, there are a variety of mobile apps that can help. I should acknowledge, of course, that the manufacturing and disposal of phones aren’t great for the environment, especially when these phones end up in landfills instead of being recycled. You could offset this to some extent by holding onto your phone for longer, changing out the battery instead of upgrading perhaps, and more importantly, either donating or recycling the old phone when you do upgrade. And while you have that smartphone, installing apps that provide information, metrics, and, more importantly, a nudge towards making more sustainable choices can only help.
Our lifestyle choices impact the environment
If you’re someone like me who’s just getting started with understanding how our lifestyle choices impact the environment, apps like Oroeco, Zero Carbon and My CO2 Calculator can help. The Oroeco app calculates a user’s carbon footprint impact using data from their credit card activity and user-provided information. I updated my profile (sans credit-card interface) and it was insightful to see the breakdown of how my activities such as commuting, food and shopping choices contributed to carbon emissions on a macro level. Oroeco provides suggestions for offsetting carbon footprint, just like similar apps such as Zero carbon and My CO2 do. These apps also serve as a platform for community engagement — or connect to other social media platforms like Facebook — and give users incentives to make better decisions by sharing their climate-conscious choices with other members, letting users earn virtual rewards (and bragging rights to go with it).
Becoming an eco-conscious shopper
Apps can provide more information to consumers wanting to make more environmentally-friendly shopping choices as well. Good Guide has an app that lets you scan the product’s UPC and then displays and rates each ingredient based on how hazardous it is, also providing any certifications that the product may have. The EWG’s Healthy Living app does the same to assign a score to a consumer good based on the ingredients, whether they are organic or not, nutrition value (for food), and processing concerns. There are a lot of apps within the food category that point users towards more eco-conscious choices, whether it is letting them know which fruits and vegetables are in season and therefore locally sourced (the Seasons app), letting the users know of common pesticide levels in different types of produce (the Harvest app) or which seafood is more sustainably sourced (the Seafood Watch app). There are apps such as Foodwaze that point users towards businesses with more sustainable practices; some, such as the Farmstand app that points users to local farmers markets, have shut down.
Saving the environment starts at home
Some apps help preserve resources like energy and water in the household. The Dropcountr app tracks your home water usage with a participating provider, detects leaks that may not be obvious, and sets goals for household water usage. A smart thermostat like Nest, together with the app, can make your home more energy efficient by using built-in motion sensors in addition to your phone’s GPS location to know when you’ve left your home, reducing the heating or cooling requirements and saving energy. And of course, it also learns your schedule and heating/cooling preferences to set it for you, reducing unnecessary energy expenditure. Apps like EcoCharge for android help extend your phone’s battery life by alerting you when the phone is charged to optimal ‘shallow charging’ levels, which means charging the phone only up to 90% and not letting the battery drop to less than 50%, which has been shown to increase battery life, thereby reducing the waste that comes with discarded batteries. Apps like RecycleNation and iRecycle tell you where you can recycle different material categories (including mobile phones, just sayin’).
Share, re-use, re-sell
Finally, if you’re part of the sharing economy, you’re probably already making environment-friendly choices. One of the impacts of collaborative consumption that I’m excited about is the move towards a lesser number of things in our ecosystem. This is because of a shift from ownership-based usage to pay-per-use usage and redistribution of ownership. We’ll look at this in detail in another article.
How can you make the world a better place? Through a mobile app, at least. Contact NoMoBo to get started with creating your app. NoMoBo has a team of experts who will work with you every step of the way, from market research to user experience design, build and support.
