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Using technology to live a greener lifestyle
Research, commissioned by BCS, The Chartered Institute for IT, found that only 31% of Britons have looked up products online and got information on how environmentally friendly they are, and just 27% have used the internet to get advice on how they could be greener. Most shockingly, a mere 16% had tried to calculate their carbon footprint online.
The British public is still failing to harness the wealth of information available online to make sure that their purchases and lifestyle habits are as green as they could be. While recycling household waste and using energy efficient light bulbs have become second nature to most, consumers still aren’t making sure that their purchases are green and are largely unaware of their own environmental impact.
Elizabeth Sparrow, President, BCS, The Chartered Institute for IT, said, “Most people are not accessing the resources available to them to make greener decisions about what they buy and how they live, and this must be addressed. While it’s encouraging that 85% of Britons claim to recycle their household waste and 94% have used energy saving light bulbs, there is much more that we all could do”
Doing some online research in advance of making a purchase could encourage shoppers to make greener purchases. For example, by checking that your next electrical buy is an ‘Energy Star’ product, or carries a similar green label, will not only help to reduce your carbon footprint, but will also save you money. Energy Star products are estimated to cut average power usage by about 75% over standard machines.
Elizabeth Sparrow continued, “Saving energy often means saving money as well as precious resources. The internet has a wealth of environmental information and people need to be aware of what’s out there and how to access, use and manage it to help them lead greener, more energy efficient lives. The Savvy Citizens site should be one of their first ports of call.”
The environment topic of the Savvy Citizens campaign (http://savvycitizens.bcs.org), which launches today, provides access to blogs, resources lists and other materials to help people find out how to harness information available on the internet to help them minimisetheir environmental impact.
A Savvy Citizens quiz to test how environmentally savvy you are can be found on Facebook at:http://apps.facebook.com/savvycitizensquiz/_fb_fromhash=9949b1e630575e161f148798aba6522d
The Savvy Citizens campaign can also be found on Twitter @SavvyCitizens and has its own Facebook fan page http://www.facebook.com/pages/Savvy-Citizens/184190617483?ref=ts.
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