6 ways to be smart about your smartphone
By Anna Minns of green lifestyle website, Daily Lime.
The hype surrounding the release of the iPhone 5 was the kind usually reserved for touring boy bands. But instead of getting swept up in the hype of the next “must-have” smartphone, why not love the one you’re with! In Australia we replace our mobile phones every 1-2 years and this year 8 million phones will be upgraded. To help the environment and the growing problem of e-waste, avoid buying each and every ‘new’ phone.
2. Extend your smartphone's (battery) life
Smartphones do so much. Because we send emails, surf the web, run apps - oh, and talk - on them, their batteries get a workout! To reduce your battery’s workload, and therefore the amount of time you need to spend charging your phone, you could use your phone less (as if!), or you could follow some simple tips, such as reducing the brightness of your screen; turning off push notifications for your mail; when not using the web turning off 3G; kill apps that are running in the background; and don’t use vibrate. If we all charged our phones half as often it would be the equivalent of taking half a million cars off the road.
Have you noticed how your phone charger stays warm even when it is not attached to your phone? That’s because it’s still consuming energy.Only 5 per cent of the energy used by mobile phone chargers is used to charge the phone! Only keep your phone charger switched on until your phone is charged, try to avoid charging your mobile overnight and don’t leave your charger in a power board.
Use your smartphone more! Browsing the internet, checking facebook or reading emails on your smartphone uses a lot less energy than doing it on your laptop or desktop computer. In fact, updating your facebook status from a mobile phone uses about 100 times less energy than if you were to do it from a desktop PC. So if you have a choice, choose your smartphone.
5. Use it to download Fashion Apps to keep your wardrobe green
Love fashion but hate waste? You can still be stylish and eco-savvy by downloading these smartphone fashion apps: Closet Swap - to get clothes swapping with this ebay-like app; GreenGlamGo - where you will find the latest eco fashion news, interviews and featured designers; Good Shopping Guide - take a pic of a product's barcode and be told instantly information about its eco, and other, credentials.
6. Recycle!
On average in Australia there are two used mobile phones for every household that are sitting in drawers gathering dust. It is time to clean out your drawers and recycle your old phones! Over 90 per cent of the materials in the phones and accessories can be recycled. You can drop them off at over 4,500 collection points around the country, you can send them off to a number of organisations who will give you money in return, or you can donate them to a charity who will receive that money on your behalf.
