If you are searching for ways to go green and help the environment this Christmas but aren’t so inclined to venture outside into the cold October air then there are a number of alternative ways you, your friends, and your family can go for to still make sure you are being eco-friendly and helping the Earth. As technology dominates our lives daily, sustainability companies have to change to keep up with the growing demand for easier methods of supplying demand whilst also ensuring they are ethically minded. Enter apps (short for applications) these little programs we place on our phones, desktops, and laptops, offer us a fast and simple way of doing a wide range of things that are greener, more ethical, and help us feel that we are contributing to a good cause.
- Foodcloud
An app designed to combat food waste, so whether you’re a shop or retailer, you can connect with local charities to stop food waste and to provide those in need with food when they need it most. Before out-of-date food is thrown out at the end of the day, this handy app lets you upload images and descriptions of food products, charities are then able to search through the food waste close to them and buy the products at a fraction of their usual cost. This has helped over 9,100 charitable groups receive the surplus of food in Ireland and the UK, supplying 50 million meals and saving 22,000 tonnes of food from the skip.
2. Good Guide
Every product we buy or sell has an impact on our planet and Good Guide is a useful way of learning which products are ethical, green, and safe to use, covering areas such as personal care, household, as well as babies and kid products. For each listed product the site generates 3 ratings, a health rating, an environmental rating, and a social rating. This includes the energy and resources consumers plus the pollution produced in manufacturing the product, the nutritional value of foods, the agricultural and animal husbandry practices, and the corporate sponsorship of social and political companies.
3. Swapabee
Using their unique matching algorithm, Swapabee allows users the ability to trade their unwanted items for others to help reduce the problem of waste. With a total of 31 million tonnes of waste every year coming from households, they strive to reduce this by extending a products life cycle on all sorts of items from clothing and games, to books and costumes.
4. iRecycle
A quick app that lets you find nearby recycling locations for anything you need to recycle including batteries, old electronics, glass, chemicals, paper, and metal. Making it easier for a consumer to dispose of items more efficiently helps waste go to the correct place and not inflict unnecessary harm to the environment. iRecycle also utilises efficient canal and river networks to move waste out of London and decrease the carbon footprint in the capital.
5. GreenChoice
The food industry is one of the largest contributors to climate change in the world due to a lack of sustainable choices at the grocery store. GreenChoice has evaluated and rated more than 340,000 food & beverage products’ so that it is far easier for consumers to find foods that are in line with their shopping values, dietary preferences, and food allergies or sensitivities all the while empowering them to be able to eat healthily and improve shop sustainability.
These apps help in ways many people haven’t thought of and it’s these examples of alternative thinking that help propel our society towards a cleaner and safer future. These apps are all about reducing the effort involved in becoming clean and staying green.
This article is in association with SWAPABEE. An app company that allows anyone to swap their items for other ones. Create an account and start swapping today at https://swapabee.co.uk/.
