Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
(Taylor, 2005). The revolution may be digitized, but on the other hand it may not.
Cottle (2011b) has shown that Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and other sites were
significant factors in the Arab Spring revolution, although no clear-cut generalizations
can be made. However, as Day and Schuler (2006) have suggested, the fundamental
characteristic of the network society is the potential for people across the world to
connect with each other. Whether active or passive, the world's various populations
co-exist and interrelate within both global natural ecosystems and the global media
ecology. New 'communities' can develop around new shared interests, aims, values,
worldviews and concerns, and apply, adapt and/or develop socio-technical platforms
to support and animate these concerns, networks and relationships. These may be
Green apps
In 2012, writing for the Tree Hugger website, Alex Davies noted that
while the 'greenness' of the iPad is debatable, and there are lots of ways to avoid
ever 'needing' one, it can still be a really useful tool for living a sustainable life.
From helping you get around on your bike to eating veggies to understanding
climate change, these 13 awesome apps will all get you on the right path.
These apps include: Gardening Toolkit, Vegan YumYum, Bike Repair, Audubon
Guide, Solar Checker, My Recycle List and Google Maps. The organizers of Earth
Day in 2012 saw it as only fitting 'that we leverage the popularity of mobile phones
to help further the cause of conserving planetary resources' (Steele, 2012). The Earth
Day website offered all manner of green information, advice and guidance, links to
social media groups of conservationists and environmental activists. The website
provides details of GreenMeter, an iOS app for the iPhone and iPad Touch, which
calculates a vehicle's fuel use, helping a driver assess his environmental impact while
on the move. Seafood Watch is an iOS and Android app that enables consumers to
make sustainable choices when purchasing wet fish or eating in fish restaurants. The
Treehugger app enables people to keep up to date with sustainability-related news.
Green Shine helps consumers replace many commercial cleaners with environmentally
friendly, healthier and safer ones. TVE produced five short films for its contribution
to Rio 2012 on how apps can assist development projects in the majority world.
The US company MapCruzin offers a wide range of GIS tools, including environmental
risk maps, interactive toxic facility maps and toxic-release inventory data together
with online tutorials that enable community groups to locate the big polluters in
their neighbourhoods, undertake ecological and habitat assessments, evaluate health
risks, form toxic watch groups, publish maps indicating areas of local toxicity and
conduct facility audits in the belief that they may create a more virtuous and politically
green citizenry (Micheletti, 2010).
From June to November 2011 the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA)
conducted the 'Apps for the Environmental Challenge' programme asking software
developers to come up with new apps which would combine and deliver environmental
data. Thirty-eight apps were submitted, which are now publicly available. Among
the five overall winners were: Light Bulb Finder, which facilitates the change from
incandescent to energy-efficient lightbulbs empowering users to make informed
