Everyone is going green. Some call it a green craze but I chose to call it ‘the right thing to do’. For over a decade, the green revolution has been breaking new frontiers, and from the look of everything, it isn’t going to die or slow down anytime soon. Developers all over the world are continually looking to provide phone users with ‘Green’ information and have created apps that can easily be installed. Still, there are few, if any ‘green’ Kenyan apps. Developers in this region have still not taken up the challenge of creating locally-friendly apps. James Mwai, a Kenyan mobile apps developer says, “There’s no advocacy from any environmental bodies enlightening developers on the importance of building green apps. Such an area would need immense developer motivation.”
With Kenya’s current state of rising fuel prices and power bills, damning traffic jams and unpredictable weather patterns, the below are my select top three apps, which if adopted and fully implemented locally, could make our lives much easier while at the same time saving on energy and costs.
The GreenDrive app- GreenDrive assists motorists to find the most efficient route of transport from Point A to Point B, hereby providing efficiency (i.e shortest route in the quickest time by doing a quick analysis of the road traffic). The app also allows you to enter your car’s specifics like model and engine size into the user interface application and then use this information to generate a value that would be considered your optimal environmental speed. This helps you stay within your optimal speed limit range and effectively reduce your car’s emissions hence emitting a smaller carbon footprint.
Light Bulb Finder app – A Milauwkee Engineer, Adam Borut built this hugely popular app that helps users save energy by finding the most energy efficient light bulbs in stores by rating the bulbs’ energy saving. In 2011 Light Bulb Finder had over 10,000 downloads on the iOS (Apple) and Android platform (USA today). And the app has a twist—if you can’t find an energy saving app around you to buy, it arranges one for you, at their pricing.
iGrowIt App – Plants take in carbon-dioxide and produce oxygen so planting crops is an environmental friendly activity. iGrowIt explains what vegetables to grow in your garden, the best time of the year to grow them and how you look after them.
The GreenDrive app is the only one that is currently available locally for download on the Nokia Store.
This article was originally published on UP Magazine where I am a regular contributor.
