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Finding a way to live a more eco-friendly lifestyle is easier when you have a few tips up your sleeves. There are dozens of books, social media feeds or sustainable apps that will help you to reduce your waste, measure your impact and even reduce CO2 emissions too. However you want to live more sustainably it’s easy when you take it one day at a time especially with a little bit of help from technology.
Too Good To Go
The Problem: Did you know that 1/3 of of the world’s food is wasted every year? It’s inappropriate considering that 870 million people go hungry daily. That waste is not only land and water resources wasted, but it also leads to 3.3 billion tons of greenhouse gases emitted into our atmosphere.
“All of us – farmers, national governments; individual consumers – must make changes… to prevent food wastage. Re-use or recycle it when we can’t.”
José Graziano da Silva Director-General of the Food and Agriculture Organization
The Solution: Too Good To Go is a service that redistributes food that would normally go to waste by selling it at a discount. To date, it has 29.2 million users across the world and has managed to save 53.9 million meals supermarkets and restaurants from being wasted.
How It Works: Open the app and you’ll find stores, restaurants and bakeries that have extra food available around your area that day. You can then purchase the food for about a third of the regular price (the cost typically ranges between $4 to $8) and collect it in-store at a pre-set time.
Paper Karma
The Problem: Junk mail is just that… junk that is costing our planet. Each US household receive about 850 pieces of unwanted junk mail per year. And, all that mail comes at the cost of 100 million trees being destroyed and 28 billion gallons of water wasted.
The Solution: The company’s motto is, “Kill Junk Mail, Save Trees.” This app helps you to save trees and reduce waste by contacting mailers.
How It Works: PaperKarma is an app that stops the endless flow of junk mail with just a snapshot. Simply take a picture of the magazine, catalog, coupon, etc. press unsubscribe, and PaperKarma will tell the sender to remove you from their mailing list. Requests take up to 3 months to process and after four free unsubscribe requests, PaperKarma costs $1.99/month.
OLIO
The Problem: Is mentioned above, food waste is a BIG problem. Here are a few statistics about the resources used annually.
- Food production accounts for 26% of global greenhouse gas emissions.
- 1/2 of the world’s habitable land is used for agriculture.
- 70% of freshwater is used for agriculture.
The Solution: While some sustainable apps work directly with restaurants and stores, OLIO is a food-sharing platform that helps connect you with your neighbors and local retailers to give away food that might otherwise go to waste. In addition to food, the platform has also expanded to trading other items such as homewares, toys, books and much more.
How It Works: According to Olio, ore than 2 million people have signed up to use the app, sharing around 6.6 million portions of food. To join you can login and create a profile where you can share the items that you want to give away or browse through listings for freebies in your area. If you’re interested in an item, send a quick friendly message and enjoy knowing that you’ve kept an item out of the landfill.
HowGood
The Problem: Most consumers (and brands) don’t know the impact of the items that they’re buying. And, without knowing our impact, how can we make better choices to minimize it? For instance,
The Solution: HowGood is the world’s largest product sustainability database. More specifically, it offers users a catalog with over 100,000 food products analyzed through sixty benchmark indicators like labor conditions, pesticide use, water usage, animal welfare, community impact and emission history.
How It Works: Begin by scanning the barcode of a food product and the app will tell you in seconds how it has been produced and how sustainable it is for the planet. A “Good” rating goes to a product that ranks in the top 25 percent of food products sold in the United States, a “Great” rating goes to those in the top 15 percent, and a “Best” rating is reserved for products in the top 5 percent.
HappyCow
The Problem: Meat production is not a sustainable industry. According to a United Nations 2008 report:
- Clearing of land for livestock production has been one of the driving forces behind deforestation.
- Livestock use 1/10 of the world’s fresh water.
- Livestock erode and contaminate our soil through animal wastes, antibiotics, hormones, chemicals from tanneries, fertilizers and pesticides used for feed crops.
- The quantity of animals being raised for human consumption also poses a threat of the Earth’s biodiversity.
The Solution: According to HappyCow a vegan diet saves 1 animal’s life, 1,100 gallons of water, 45 pounds of grain, 20 Lbs CO2 and 30 feet of forest land daily. There are numerous benefits to our health we eat plant-based diets. It’s been linked to a lower risk of type 2 diabetes and heart attacks and can minimize the greenhouse gases that are caused from meat production.
How It Works: Since its inception in 1999, HappyCow has become an award-winning sustainable app that finds the nearest vegan or vegetarian restaurants, cafes, grocery stores and more. With their effective filters you can also have the app cater to your own individual taste. Next to restaurant listings and reviews the app offers vegan recipes, blogs and forums to discuss health, travel and more.