Blog | News & Information on Wireless Services & Telecommunications
Posted: 04/22/10 by Jonathan Spalter
Cross-posted from Huffington Post
Earth Day is this week so what better time to take stock of the ways that mobile products can help make a greener planet.
A 2009 national traffic survey concluded that Americans wasted 4.2 billion hours and 2.8 billion gallons of gas stuck in traffic jams. But some areas are starting to get a more efficient handle on traffic thanks to wireless. Take Los Angeles County, which has recently deployed a wireless monitoring system across more than 1,000 intersections.
The wireless system allows traffic managers to change traffic light timing instantly to reflect changing traffic conditions, including rush hour patterns and accidents. The result has been a reduction in commuting times by as much as 20 percent.
Speaking of saving gas, look at the environmental impact from the decision by Arizona Public Service (APS), Arizona's largest electric utility, to install wireless utility transmitters on homes and offices. With more than 160,000 wireless smart meters already installed, APS has estimated that its savings include 150,000 fewer field visits. The utility has committed to deploying about 1 million wireless meters by the end of 2012.
Even beyond green benefits of fewer trucks on the road, the integration of wireless monitoring systems into a home or building electrical system pays almost immediate dividends. Let's say you left on a week's vacation and forgot to turn off the AC or water heater. No problem: There are smartphone apps for different mobile operating systems that let you turn off (or on) the heating, AC, water heater, or security cameras. For a few options, click here.)
Closer to home, wireless technologies are increasingly saving patients from having to drive to a doctor's office, not to mention providing better care. For the elderly and the infirm especially, these can be major benefits.
Also encouraging, wireless users are also seeing more evidence of the convergence of mobile phone chargers, so that you won't need to throw out a charger when you switch phones. All the major phone manufacturers have committed to this by 2012 and it looks like consumers may not even have to wait that long.
But for all the benefits of recycling, the best way to help the environment is by giving your old phone to someone who needs it. Cell Phones for Soldiers is a great organization that will take your old phone, wipe off any data and uses the sale proceeds to purchase at least an hour of calling time for soldiers abroad.
Finally, are you the type who leaves your phone charging all night and then leaves the charger plugged in even after removing the phone? Based on research into "standby" electricity consumption by the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, if there are 50 million phone adapters in the U.S. left plugged in all year, that uses more than 100 million kilowatts of electricity - or enough for the average yearly electrical needs of 25,000 Americans.
Take an Earth Day resolution right now: Unplug your chargers!
Posted: 02/01/10 by Molly Kocour
Last week, we tweeted about a cellphone battery that would run on soda. While the idea of a soda-fueled cellphone is still highly conceptual, the New York Times highlights another environmentally-friendly method to charge the electronics in your life.
"The technology uses a photosenstive dye to start its energy production, much the way leaves use chlorophyll to begin photosynthesis. The dye-sensitized cells will be used to provide power for devices ranging from e-book readers to cellphones."
The cells are incorporated into panels that are sewn to a variety of accessories including: covers for e-readers, backpacks and sports bags, and will enable consumers to charge their electronics via a USB cord. You can read more of the article here.
Posted: 12/24/09 by Mobile Future Team
If you're in need of a holiday gift for that environmentally conscious mobile user who just got back from the summit in Copenhagen, here's a thought: a carbon-neutral phone from Motorola. According to the company, the plastic case of the Renew is made entirely of recycled water bottles and its packaging is made from 100 percent recycled material. Moreover, according to the CNet reviewers, it's actually a pretty decent phone.
Posted: 10/30/09 by Molly Kocour
Are you the kind that stresses because you occasionally leave your PDA plugged in all night and you're worried about the waste of electricity? Well, rest easy because it turns out that the impact on the environment is pretty minimal.
A recent WashPo
Green Lantern column, cites figures from the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratories to suggest that if you leave a typical mobile phone plugged in for eight unnecessary hours every night for a year, you'll waste about 6.5 kilowatt-hours of electricity.
That's about .15 percent of the average household's annual electricity usage. By comparison, swapping an incandescent light for a compact fluorescent could save about 125 kilowatt-hours.
So if you occasionally forget to unplug your phone when Conan comes on, don't sweat it. Your phone's energy usage is so low that it won't make much difference.
Posted: 02/19/09 by Molly Kocour
We're making progress: "Until now, there have been few models available of so-called green, or environmentally friendly, mobile phones.... That is slowly changing, as the mobile phone industry looks for ways to appeal to a growing segment of consumers who want to reduce their carbon footprints."
According to The Times, there won't be any completely "green" phones unveiled at the Mobile Word Congress this week in Barcelona. That's still a couple of years away, at least for affordable ones. But look at other innovations:
- A light sensor that detects natural light, allowing phones to save energy.
- A phone made from recycled water bottles which can itself be recycled when it's no longer used.
- A charger that draws a fraction of the power of most chargers when plugged into an outlet, but not to a phone. (It's still better to unplug your charger when it's not in use.)
So progress is coming and the additional cost of being green keeps dropping. Call it a hunch but that's a trend certain to continue.
Posted: 01/12/09 by Allison Remsen
We're back from CES and as Alex Pham and Michelle Maltais
write in today's Los Angeles Times, mobile wireless technology is one of the top trends of the year. (The others are "green" electronics, better Internet access and new ways to interact with your tech devices.) Among the highlights we saw during our trip:
- Lost the owners manual for your new Ford F-150? No prob. Use the in-dash computer to access it wirelessly.
- Palm's new Pre phone and Web OS platform show that competition in the "smartphone" arena is vibrant and giving consumers more options.
- A new generation of fast wireless chargers like the Powermat promise to free us from untangling that power cord snakepit in our desk drawer.
After a long day at the show, these products might not have the allure of the
frozen icebar at Red Square but they're still pretty cool.
Posted: 01/07/09 by Mobile Future Team
A tip of the hat to The Louisville Zoo, which has the Number 1 phone recycling program in the nation according to the green group, ECO-CELL.
More than 100 zoos in North America participate in the group’s recycling program and in 2008, ECO-CELL claims these efforts have diverted 4,000 pounds of toxic cell phone batteries, 35,000 cell phones and 6,000 pounds of cell phone accessories from landfills. The Louisville Zoo collected more than 4,400 old cell phones.
For more on phone recycling, including links to drop-off bins, click here.
Posted: 11/11/08 by Jo-Anne Basile
Want to help a military family that can't afford a mobile phone? Or a domestic abuse victim? Then donate that old phone that's been sitting unused for the past six months. You're not only doing a good deed but as Rachel King wrote in Business Week last week, you're also helping the environment:
"The EPA estimates that if the 100 million U.S. mobile devices eligible for refurbishing were actually recycled this year, we could save enough to power more than 194,000 U.S. households with electricity for one year."
Some may be concerned about exposing their personal data. After all, there was the sales director for a major Japanese firm who gave away a Blackberry with unencrypted sensitive information, including a business plan.
But no need to worry. Here's a place with free instructions on erasing your data.
So since you don't have to worry about your data anymore, go ahead and donate. By the holidays, someone in need will thank you.
Posted: 09/10/08 by Jonathan Spalter
As national governments increasingly are developing policies to curb and manage greenhouse gas emissions, mobile innovators are deploying sophisticated mobile-based software platforms to help industries, states, municipalities and the federal government to track, manage, report and analyze their greenhouse gas footprints, and comply with policy mandates.
Such is the assessment of one mobile innovator, Larry Goldenhersh, CEO of the California-based company Enviance, whose company, along with other companies like ESS, have been developing and deploying mobile applications for their core software platforms to allow industries, governments, and organizations to gather, enter and share data, facilitate bar coding and data logging in order to efficiently comply with new energy efficiency reporting requirement, taxation mandates, and trading regimes.
I met with Larry recently to learn more about the emerging field of "green" applications for mobile. Now, he said, engineers and project managers in the field, equipped with mobile devices, can gather and analyze complex data sets for their companies, organizations, or governments to facilitate compliance with voluntary greenhouse gas reduction programs, populate GHG registries, facilitate participation in "cap and trade" programs, and collaborate in sectoral, scientific, and governmental GHG programs and initiatives.
The use of mobile and wireless technologies as a core component in measuring and managing the environmental footprint of companies and governmental assets is more than merely a moral or a PR posture; Larry said, it is a bottom-line best practice. Indeed, one market research firm , in its recent survey "Communicating Green", has modeled future economic benefits of using mobile and wireless, along with other communications platforms, in designing and deploying mobile communications and data services for environmental management, and concludes that the future marketplace for green mobile innovation is highly attractive globally.
That is one of the reasons that an increasing number of innovators, including companies like Enviance, and others are pioneering this path to a greener future, and an increasingly mobile future.
Posted: 05/29/08 by Chris Parandian
I read with great interest a story in the Times Online about Apple’s recent patent filing and a solar powered iPhone. This isn’t the first time a manufacturer has thought about a “green phone” but Apple may be in the best positionto get it done. These developments are great news for the industry andfurther demonstrates the innovation occurring in this sector.
On a related note, last year at this time,I pondered why the wireless industry hasn’t highlighted more of itseffort in this space. All four major carriers participate in recyclingefforts.As we have seen in the car industry, a green reputation can beextremely powerful. For instance, Toyota has captured the hearts andminds of consumers with its Prius.
Thereis still a huge opportunity for the wireless industry here.Accordingly, I’m psyched that Mobile Future is making this a majorinitiative and we will be hosting a panel in June (on Capitol Hill) onrecycling.
Stay tuned for more information on that event…
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