Technology goes green on the web

4:17pm Friday 11th April 2008

Comments (0)   Have your say »

Technology is often virtually green. It is hard to tell if any of our new media activities are really green or not. But some companies are pushing the boundaries to bring serious green effects to our fingertips. One recent developments involves black being more green than white... read on.

The next time you search on the Web why not call up Australia's green answer to surfing - www.blackle.com . In stark contrast to the likes of Google pages, which use lots of white space, their pages come up black. The Australian creators, Heap Media, claim black backgrounds, made of pixels, use less power than white ones. Google has questioned this. But competition can only be good for us and the environment. May the best colour win.

There are a number of tools for websites, which track the number of users, calculate the energy consumed, and offer CO2 offsets. The CO2 Stats Project widget is the brainchild of two university student entrepreneurs. They offer it free in a basic format, or the pro-version for sale. You put the electronic tool on your website and it lets users know how much energy your website is consuming, and compensates, via sponsors for it, by investing in renewable energy projects. It's a great step forward. www.co2stats.com/ Facebook, www.facebook.com. uses its own Greenbook. Simply put, if you incorporate the Greenbook into your Facebook site, then more funds from sponsors are put into green projects. apps.facebook.com/greenbook/about.php?how If you are proud of the environmentally-friendly digital filing system you use reducing the use of print products, think how proud Xerox must be with the launch of the new green Sustainability Calculator at the end of March. They have looked the C02 monster in the eye and come up with a way of helping companies get the real facts on their impact, focussing on printers and faxes. They developed it because people incorporating green practices at home were becoming frustrated with the lack of environmentally-friendly practices at their offices. Power to the people.

www.xerox.com Individuals and businesses seem to be trying to do their best. But if you put green and government' in the search engines, the UK news is old and not very positive. The watchdog, Sustainable Development Commission, recently pointed out the Government has a long way to go to meet its targets of reducing carbon emissions from its own offices by 12.5 per cent by 2010. Time is flying by and emissions have only been reduced by four per cent since the target was set in 1999. They are calling on our government to take urgent and radical action'. The Government needs to put more energy into this promise. We can help by reminding them to keep their promise.

www.sd-commission.org.uk/ There is a fun, informative blog with lots of green tech news at earth2tech.com.

Slowly but surely, green technology will join the parade of people around the globe trying to make a difference.

On The Gazette site: Visit Go Green for news, information and blogs. If you have Green news or want to be a local online news contributor, contact Kate Whiteside at kate.whiteside@kendal.newsquest.co.uk.