Clicks for the planet
These seven ingenious helpers not only make life easier, but also help protect our planet by conserving resources.
Conserve resources with the cloud
Forget USB sticks, external hard drives and DVDs. Not only can they spread viruses, they easily break and quickly become outdated. Ultimately, they end up as electronic scrap, potentially polluting the environment. It's much better to save data such as holiday photos or work files in the cloud. And even better in the Magenta Cloud, where your data is safely stored on servers located in Germany. The technology also conserves energy and resources. We make sure that storage space is shared with other users efficiently, again conserving valuable resources.
Say goodbye to annoying parking space searches
After a hard day's work looking for a parking space near the apartment - who does not know that. The search not only damages our nerves, but also our purse in the form of expensive fuel money and, last but not least: the environment. The app Park & Joy helps you find and reserve parking facilities. Because the app intelligently links parking lot owners with searchers. Find out here how this works and where you can use the app.
Don't buy, stream
Fewer people are buying CDs – to the benefit of the environment. Streaming films and music using services as Entertain TV or spotify is not only convenient, it also helps reduce electronic scrap. DVDs and CDs are primarily made of polycarbonate, a valuable and relatively expensive plastic material. Remember: DVDs and CDs should not be disposed of in normal household waste. The plastics they contain can be easily recycled and re-used, e.g. in medical technology or by the computer industry. The environmentally friendly way to dispose of DVDs and CDs is to bring them to your nearest recycling center or, if you are in Bonn, use the red waste bins in different locations across the city.
Useful vitamin-related tips
Did you know? Lettuce harvested in August contains three to five times the amount of healthy flavonoids as lettuce harvested in April. Open-field tomatoes contain three times the amount of vitamin C than tomatoes grown in greenhouses. Try our iVeg app to find out the maximum dose of vitamins and vegetable substances. It recommends seasonal and regional fruits and vegetables that are especially beneficial to your health - and the environment. Saving unnecessary transport minimizes CO₂ emissions, which in turn slows down the dangerous effects of climate change.
DE-Mail instead of postal mailing
According to Statista, 18.6 billion letters are sent via the German postal service Deutsche Post alone. If we assume one page per letter, manufacturing the required amount of paper would consume a forest the size of 1,400 soccer fields and 4.7 million bathtubs of water. Resources that are increasingly rare. The above numbers show how important it is to replace paper with digital media. Today, even legally admissible and verifiable mail can be sent electronically via DE-Mail. At the moment, the service is only available in Germany. Another advantage: While regular email is unencrypted and can be hacked easily, DE-Mail offers strong encryption to protect your email from unauthorized access.
Your shared car - just a tap away
Car-sharing services improve mobility mostly for city dwellers without their own cars. Private online sharing platforms connecting car owners with individuals who would like to rent a car on an hourly basis are less well-known than services like DriveNow, Car2Go, Zipcar, etc. One of the providers on the German market is tamyca, short for "take my car." The best-known services in the US are turo and getaround. Frankly - why own an expensive car that occupies valuable parking space most of the time when you can save money and natural resources? With sharing, you have your finger on the pulse of the latest trend.
Shopping sustainably
Keep your smartphone ready when strolling through a German supermarket if you want to shop environmentally friendly: NABU, an app by German environmental organization Deutscher Naturschutzbund, analyses photos of environmental labels on products and provides information on the sustainability of manufacturing processes. Why is that so important? We currently consume resources amounting to 1.5 times those available on our planet and will have to ensure that sustainability and efficient recycling are factored in as early as the product production phase.