5 Eco-Friendly Smartphone Apps That Are Worth Your Time
Many of us try to make more sustainable choices on a daily basis, but sorting out how to go about making the best choices can be complex. There are so many eco-friendly smartphone apps to choose from that consumers risk being even more overwhelmed as they wade into the world of apps aimed at making environmentally friendly choices more accessible.
With the right technology on your side, you can streamline your efforts to live a more sustainable life. Our team picked five practical eco-friendly apps that meet the complex needs of consumers by making sustainable processes more streamlined and easy to understand.
For Product Evaluation, Go To GoodGuide
GoodGuide assists consumers in finding ethical, environmentally-friendly and ethical products. The company provides science-based ratings of personal care, household and food products. GoodGuide has rated over 75,000 products, and has teamed up with Target to provide ratings for many of the products sold in their stores. It’s important to note that GoodGuide provides independent, third-party ratings.
GoodGuide independently evaluates ingredients and delivers a detailed product rating based on criteria the user can personalize. Users can select the issues they find most important- organic or fair-trade certifications, for example- and evaluate products based on that criteria.
To learn more, visit GoodGuide online.
Leafully Helps You Understand Energy Usage
Do you want to understand your own energy usage, but have trouble knowing where to begin? You’re in the same boat as most consumers! Leafully is one of our favorite apps for those concerned with their eco-footprint and reducing carbon emissions.
Leafully is all about helping people understand energy usage. This app takes complex data about your energy usage and simplifies it into the understandable structure of a tree. Rather than just focusing on electricity usage, this app tries to offer the user a “total tree footprint,” or the amount of trees needed to offset the pollution created by your energy consumption.
The app uses consumers’ connection to social media to create environmental change. From their website: “Given this knowledge of the global impact of their behavior, people will start making habit changes. Our goal is to encourage them through connecting them with their friends. Through Facebook, people are rewarded by their peers for being a good global citizen by allow them to work together on key tasks.”
You Don’t Always Know Whether You Can Recycle That. IRecycle Does!
One of the reasons to download sustainability app is to make eco-friendly processes more habitual and easy to understand, so that people are actually able to integrate behaviors that reduce their carbon footprint.
IRecycle is a tool to help users understand what to recycle, how to recycle it, and what community resources exist for recycling items that you may not be able to toss in the bin.
Keep in mind that being a “bad” recycler can actually create a lot of unnecessary work and emissions. IRecycle can help you stay on top of your recycling game by connecting you with more than 150,000 ways to recycle products and materials ranging from glass to hazardous waste.
Carma Carpooling
Carma is a great option for reducing the environmental impact of your commute while saving money on tolls for opting for a high-occupancy commuting option. The app locates nearby commuters with a space in their vehicle using bluetooth, and then connects you to ride together.
When the vehicle passes through a toll plaza with two or more occupants, you receive discounts. Carma works with local governments to encourage high-occupancy commuting around the world, so if the service isn’t yet available in your area, you can ask them to set it up!
Waze: Get The Best Route Through Community
If you don’t know about Waze, you definitely should! The app evaluates your route for traffic, and automatically calculates routes that will help you save time and avoid wasting energy idling in a traffic jam.
The app works through peer-to-peer information sharing, so you get quick, real-time updates on the traffic conditions in your community. When everyone on the app works together, everyone saves gas, time and money.
