It’s World Environment Day (June 5), the United Nations day dedicated to raising awareness and promoting action to protect the environment.
First started in 1974, every year has a different theme, focusing on a pressing environmental concern.
Sure, today you can use a reusable coffee cup and get public transport instead of driving a car, but the point of World Environment Day is to encourage people to make sustainable choices every day of the year, and one way to do that is through tech.
Here are just a few ways you can make greener choices when it comes to technology.
Use the search engine that plants trees
Instead of opening up Google next time you need to search for something online trying using Ecosia. The search engine launched back in 2009 and uses its profits to plant trees, and a total of 58 million trees have been planted to date in 17 countries including Indonesia, Madagascar, Spain and Colombia.
As well as a focus on the environment, the company also puts privacy at its core: it doesn’t sell data to advertisers, searches are encrypted and not permanently stored and it promises not to use external tracking tools.
You need to make 45 searches in order to contribute to Ecosia’s tree planting work and you can do those through the app or desktop extensions on Chrome, Firefox and Safari.
Ecosia’s chief marketing officer, Hannah Wickes, told the Standard: “People are changing the way they eat, the way they shop and the way they travel in order to stop harming the planet. We’re all very aware of our carbon footprint, but we don’t often consider how small changes in the way we behave online can have a positive environmental impact as well. This is one of the next challenges society must face.
“Switching to sustainable, ethical tech solutions is key to reducing your carbon footprint. Every tree that Ecosia can plant increases our ability to tackle huge sustainability issues like palm oil deforestation or desertification around the world. “
Hold on to your devices
You might really want that shiny, brand new smartphone but have you ever thought about the environmental implications of buying a new device?
The majority of a phone’s carbon emissions over its lifetime come in the manufacturing process and so you can offset these in a few ways. One, by hanging on to your mobile for longer and two, by buying a refurbished phone which helps to cut these emissions.
Even choosing a different storage option can have an impact. According to Compare and Recycle, due to the way the devices are made, there is a difference of around 29kg in carbon emissions in a 64GB iPhone XS compared to the larger, 512GB capacity version.
And if you do choose to get a new phone, be sure to recycle the old one to prevent e-waste. Apple created its own recycling robot, called Daisy, to recycle the gold, copper and lithium in its iPhones that can be used for new smartphones.
Shop sustainably online
Another way to improve your carbon footprint is by making choices to shop with companies that have a focus on sustainability. Good Club, started by ex-Farmdrop CEO Ben Patten, wants to be the world’s first zero-waste online supermarket.
Established in 2018, the online supermarket promises that customers can enjoy between 20 to 40 per cent off their favourite organic and ethically produced groceries, thanks to the fact Good Club buys directly from wholesales, therefore cutting out the margin that retailers charge in order to cover their overheads.
As well as sourcing products from companies with a focus on sustainability, Good Club is current crowdfunding to raise money for a trial of reusable product packaging and delivery boxes. The idea is that by switching to reusable packaging, the specific tins and boxes can be recovered from customers, cleaned and then re-used again which will help to end the use of single-use plastics.
In the UK alone, supermarket supply chains contribute 800,000 tonnes of disposable plastic each year, Good Club hopes to end this.
Speaking about the campaign, Patten said: “The ugly truth is, major retailers are hesitant to admit that single-use plastic is the backbone of their business. At Good Club, our mission is to help people live a more sustainable lifestyle without breaking the bank. We're developing reusable product packaging along with logistics technology to tackle the single-use plastic crisis head-on.”
