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Owners of iPhones find all sorts of uses for the handy devices. Reko Rivera of Oldsmar, Fla., left, and John Savio of Palm Harbor, Fla., are Apple fanatics who have constructed iPhone costumes, replete with phones, flat-panel monitors and replica garnishes powered by large batteries.
Along with all the other interesting things that an iPhone can do – allow you to read free books, listen to Elvis radio, and never be out of tweeting range, for instance – a few of its more than 50,000 apps can make an environmental impact on your life.
Which ones will be most useful depends on your interests. Do you really need to clutter up your iPhone’s screen with the free Greenpeace Tissue Guide? Or is learning about the most environmentally responsible tissues, toilet paper, paper towels, and napkins a topic better researched on the computer?
Similarly, the idea of iRecycle is appealing. It helps you find nearby places to recycle almost anything – from motor oil to an old cellphone – and gives additional information about recycle center, such as their hours, website URL, and a map with directions to get you there.
But it seems most useful when you’ve just moved to a new locality. Still, it might be a handy, much-used app for some. It’s also free.
An app many love to use is the iPhone version of the Monterey Bay Aquarium’s famous Seafood Watch list.
Yes, you could print it and take it with you when you eat out. But the fact is, often the list is home and you’re in a restaurant trying to recall if flounder from the East Coast is OK and the West Coast is to be avoided – or if it’s the opposite.
Green Card, which lets you share your virtual business card with anyone in your contacts list, could be useful for those who have a thick address book. If you change your address, phone number, etc., after you’ve sent your card to someone, it will automatically update the people who received the original card.
It’s free, but it would be handier if it beamed your card to those you just met at a convention or trade show. (There’s at least one app that does that, but the other person has to have an iPhone with the program installed.)
Most of the “green living” apps seem rather simplistic. If you’re interested in the environment at all, you probably already know the tips they deliver, or think they’re just common sense. Get Green (99 cents) is more informative and allows you to save the tips you want to remember and even share them with friends.
Shopping apps may or may not be useful, depending on what you’re looking for. The best of the lot is 3rdWhale Mobile, which lets you find thousands of green businesses in hundreds of US and Canadian cities. (There’s now a free version as well as a premium one that costs $1.99.)
You can also keep up with all the green news – from sustainable living to the latest on the climate – with GreenSpot, which costs $1.99.
Has anyone tried one of the the car apps, such as greenMeter ($5.99), to help evaluate your fuel efficiency? Or do you have other apps with an environmental emphasis that you’d like to recommend to others?
Editor’s note: For more articles about the environment, see the Monitor’s main environment page, which offers information on many environment topics. Also, check out our Bright Green blog archive and our RSS feed. Or become a Twitter follower.
<< Green renovation – go it alone or hire an expert? | MainGoodGuide is a fantastic app as well… database of 60,000 products and their environmental, social, and health impacts.
@josh Wow, that sounds like an amazing resource! Who’d have thought the lowly, utilitarian phone would prove to be so useful in so many unexpected ways.
You should try Twavel for the iPhone as well! http://is.gd/r8ad/ (iTunes link)
With Twavel, you get an animated character - the Twibble - that changes depending on how much GHGs you emit, or reduce. Keep your Twibble happy and clean by emitting as little as you can when get around. Join the community of like-minded green travellers near you in the social wall built in to the app.
Twavel was demonstrated by Doug McKenzie-Mohr - http://www.cbsm.com - during his recent ‘Fostering Sustainable Behaviour’ seminar in Vancouver as an example of using social marketing to motivate sustainable behaviour change. What an honour for us at Netscribe!
@Adam That sounds brilliant, making sustainable living in the real world into a game on your phone. Whatever it takes, I say.
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In the Bright Green Blog, Environment editor Judy Lowe and blogger Eoin O'Carroll help you sort through the news, ideas, opinions, trends, challenges, and – especially – solutions along the road to an environmentally sustainable future.
Judy Lowe is the editor of the Monitor's Environment section and the author of 10 gardening books.
Eoin O'Carroll, a member of the Monitor's Web team, has been blogging here since spring 2008. His first name is pronounced "Owen."
It’s almost like cars are the sea within which we live and we’re so attached to them, it’s so habitual. . . We are trying to lead the way, to set an example about how to get away from cars altogether."
Andrew Brown, founder and CEO of New Amsterdam Project, a Cambridge company that hauls cargo via industrial tricycles
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1. Paul Smith | 10.28.09
Thanks for featuring two of our apps, GreenPeace Tissue Guide and 3rdWhale Mobile in this piece!
An important update: We’ve recently merged with GenGreen Life to form GenGreen Digital Media. What that means is that we’ve put everything into one, free app, called Find Green, and that the database is now the largest green, wellness, environmental business and services listings in North America - more then 55,000.
We’ll soon be incorporating mobile coupons as well, so that when you’re near businesses that have them, you’ll be able to just turn your phone, have a coupon to show, and be able to support a local business and yourself at the same time.
You can find it now on iPhone, here:(iTunes apps store link) http://bit.ly/2BaaXl Shortly it will also be on Google Android, then Blackberry Storm and Curve.