Inside the Briefcase
Mobile Apps Make It Easier To Go Green
May 12, 2011 No CommentsWant to figure out how to get more-efficient energy usage from your household light bulbs? Care to track your driving skills and see how to be more fuel efficient?
There’s an app not just for that, but for all things green.
The Apple App Store and the Android Market list many apps to conserve energy and find ways to go green. Many are either free or $1 or $2. They’re not as hugely successful as games or entertainment trivia, but then neither is the green movement. The array of green software applications is growing — and helping raise awareness about things all of us can do to be more environmentally friendly and responsible.
A good place to start: The Green Genie app will show you 100 different ways to go green, from bringing your own bag to the grocery store to ways to get paid for reducing your emissions.
“This is an app that pays for itself,” says Green Genie creator Brad Cracchiola, who made the app in his spare time. By day, he’s a sustainability engineer in Los Angeles at BMW Group DesignworksUSA. “Apply just one strategy, and you’ve paid for the app 10 times.”
Cracchiola has tried to add game elements to the app, to make learning fun. “Consuming information can be an overwhelming topic,” he says. “Making it fun makes it easier to digest.”
Smartphones are great tools for learning, in part because of their mobility. “It doesn’t matter where you’re at, as long as you have a cell connection, you always have access to the information,” says Provo, Utah-based Nate Younger. He is the co-creator of the Green Fuel app, which helps find alternative fuel sources for those driving non-traditional cars. “The iPhone knows your position.”
