Turn tweets into birdsong with eco-friendly mobile

Your mobile phone contract may not be the most obvious place you’d think of to reduce your environmental impact. It is fairly hard to really make an accurate estimate of the impact of using your phone, but one webpage makes an effort: A one minute mobile-to-mobile call produces 57g of CO2, sending a text message (SMS) produces 0.014g of CO2 and using 1GB of data uses 3kg of CO2.

So it can add up, and handily, there are a few ways that you can help mitigate that impact by thinking about who your provider is.

Personally, I’m with Ecotalk, who are a mobile phone subsidiary of Ecotricity, my energy provider. The network is powered by renewable energy (although see my post on energy to see why that’s a bit more complicated than it sounds), but more interestingly, the company has partnered with the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds (RSPB). All profits from running the mobile network will be donated to the RSPB, who will use it to buy new land to act as nature reserves. The network runs off EE’s masts, so has good coverage, and actually has really good deals for something that’s “green”.
For more information see www.ecotalk.co.uk

There are other options, such as Honest Mobile, who are a small outfit that go beyond net zero carbon emissions and look to offset further to become carbon negative: 1% of each bill is donated towards reforesting the planet.
For more information see www.honestmobile.co.uk

The big providers are starting to come towards the idea of sustainability: O2 wants to become carbon neutral by 2025. So do look into what they’re doing and see if you like it.
https://www.o2.co.uk/our-blueprint/environment

Of course the actual manufacturing of the phone in the first place creates a carbon impact – so try to buy refurbished phones when you can, rather than brand new. It’s not perfect, but reduces waste and wasted energy by reusing an existing device.

Photo by Alex Devera on Unsplash