How Smartphone Apps Are Bringing Sustainability To The Masses

Whether we like it or not, smartphones and apps have become part of everyday life.

For some people, they are a constant source of frustration, fun and frustration.

But there are a growing number of apps on the market that bring sustainability to the masses and turn smartphone users into citizen scientists.

One of the people helping the community solve this problem with data is Dr. Jenna Zambeck, an environmental engineer and 2022 MacArthur Fellow.

He co-founded the Marine Debris Tracker mobile app, a platform that allows community members to log the types and amounts of plastic waste in their communities.

Together with his colleagues, he developed the Circular Assessment Protocol (CAP), an effective toolkit for studying how consumer plastic enters society, how it is consumed and how it moves.

Dr Zambek said he first became interested in the problem of plastic waste when he started his doctoral work in 2001.

Even then they saw the impact, garbage was thrown into the sea, but the comment was: "Who cares about me?" It was. it was

He began looking for any available research on the subject, but could only find information from Coastal Cleanup International, which is run by the Ocean Conservancy.

Smartphones aren't as common as they were back then, but personal digital systems, or PDAs, are becoming more and more popular.

He then created a simple form that students could use to record plastic waste samples on their PDAs, which were then sent to campus computers.

He began working with his colleagues on the Marine Tracker program in 2010, which was launched the following year.

Since then the company has branded six and a half million products in 100 countries.

CAP comes from conversations with people around the world about the practical possibilities of advancing the circular economy at the community level.

Dr Zambek said CAP had seven different speakers whose content was shared with the community, as well as product design and plastic packaging.

"For me, the trick is how we bring the idea of a circular economy to society, because ultimately they are responsible for managing waste in the environment," Forbes said.

Another example is the app developed by Planet Patrol, which had over 5,400 downloads in 2021 alone.

Since 2016, Planet Patrol volunteers have tagged more than 450,000 stalls in 113 countries, either on their own or at organized clean-up events.

Planet Patrol founder Lizzie Carr said she originally wanted to create an app to report and document rising levels of pollution in England's waterways.

"Technology is making the environment more accessible to people," says Forbes

The non-profit organization released one of the largest datasets to date, including 1,229 water quality readings and 1,178 from 48 freshwater bodies in England and Scotland, including one from 57 volunteer citizens.

The survey found that 98% of all facilities did not meet acceptable standards for at least one of the five regulated wastes, more than half of facilities did not meet three or more standards, and 52%.

"Civil science allows people to go out and do things differently," Carr said.

“I think the problem we're having is that the UK government doesn't understand the real power of citizen science. Not necessarily the technology, but the real value it brings to decision making.

And not just pollution, smartphone apps are being used to educate the next generation about the natural world.

Birda, a free and easy-to-use bird watching app, has recently launched

John and Natalie White, co-founders of Birda, are using bird's-eye imagery as part of a program of scientific research aimed at conserving wetlands, forests and birds, ultimately helping to save the planet.

"All this with the same smartphone that kept him stuck on the sofa," he said.