Often we see technology as a helpful tool for simplifying common tasks that in turn, and to varying degrees, make our lives easier. Sure, sometimes more ‘techy’ stuff just adds more frustrations, but on the whole, you have to admit that technology helps us out — A LOT. From managing our personal finances, to finding our car keys, technology is right by our side to give us a hand. How can we use technology to help Planet Earth?

Go Paperless

Think of how many trees we’d save if all of our bills came digitally, instead of using multiple sheets of paper, envelopes, even the glue that seals the envelope comes from trees. We can drastically reduce deforestation by modifying how we normally use paper products and shifting our behaviors to rely more on digital storage. Did you know that one terabyte of digital storage can store 1,300 physical filing cabinets of paper!

How Smart is your House?

To help shine a light on how new Smart Home technology can help the environment, let’s take a look at lightbulbs. Smart lightbulbs use less electricity than their incandescent alternative and many of them can be controlled by an app on your phone. You can create routines to better manage the amount of electricity consumption your lights consume each month.

Solar panels are a technology that are also becoming more popular, allowing families and businesses to take advantage of renewable energy sources.

Smart window coverings can reduce energy loss through the windows, lower heating and cooling bills, and improve home comfort. About 30% of a home’s heating energy is lost through windows. In cooling seasons, about 76% of sunlight that falls on standard double-pane windows enters to become heat. If everyone is mindful about conserving energy and using renewable resources, the world can become a cleaner place.

Monitoring the Environment with Tech

We can’t fix what we don’t know. Technology is making it possible for us to better monitor our ecosystems which helps us to identify when and where problems may arise. Smart collars embedded with GPS, meters, and sensors can help keep track of endangered species like rhinos and elephants. Conservation drones are being used to track and monitor wild forest regions for any natural disasters like forest fires that can cause animals to be killed. Water system meters and sensors can monitor natural waterways and notify if dangerous or unusual levels are detected.

A Digital Network to Beautify the World

Keep Brevard Beautiful is also embracing technology to help us optimize how we achieve our mission. We developed a mobile app for our staff and volunteers to track how much and where litter is cleaned up in Brevard county. Whenever any of our staff or volunteers do a litter cleanup they can submit their stats as a cleanup story, which is saved in our cloud database. From this data, we can generate reports that tell us where different types of litter and hotspots are occurring. Additionally, anyone who spots litter in the area can create a litter report and upload photos of the litter that needs to be cleaned.

You can find the Keep Brevard Beautiful mobile app on Google Play for Android and on App Store Connect for iOS.

Keep Brevard Beautiful for Android – https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.matthallstudio.beautifulinitiative.keepbrevardbeautiful2

Keep Brevard Beautiful for iOS – https://apps.apple.com/us/app/keep-brevard-beautiful/id1467257065

Sources:

3 Ways Technologies Are Helping Us Save the Environment – https://www.allerin.com/blog/3-ways-technologies-are-helping-us-save-the-environment