Climate change, heavy air pollution, extreme and irregular weather conditions, and filled oceans and landfills with waste are serious concerns for our humanity. Can technology help us save our planet and make us make a shift towards sustainability?
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Here’s how green technology can play a major role in combating environmental problems around our world:
Raise Awareness And Educate People
In today’s digital world, almost every individual has a smartphone in their pockets. And information is just one Google search away. Nowadays, information about sustainability can be found all over the internet at all times.
Compared with the previous generations, today’s young generations have access to the internet and information about environmental concerns. Technology has the power to educate people on what are the main sustainability problems that our planet is facing and how they can contribute to stopping them. Environmental awareness and education on how to become eco-friendlier are the first two steps into creating a population that is more considerate about their actions.
In the last decade, as people have become more and more aware of environmental concerns, there have been huge changes worldwide, especially in the business landscape. For example, today’s consumers expect businesses to go green and stop polluting our environment. in fact, studies show that they are willing to pay more money on purchasing products from green businesses. All these changes in the consumer mentality have led to a drastic change in the corporate pollution businesses used to produce.
Renewable Energy Technologies
Another great way in which technology can help us save our planet is by using renewable energy to power our countries. One of the most innovative eco-friendly technology advancements have happened in the clean energy sector.
Technology has paved the way for us to use renewable sources of energy including wind and solar power. Also, as the eco-friendly trend continues to spread among consumers, these sources have also become more accessible in terms of costs.
The movement of the wind or the water and the heat and the light of the sun can be great energy sources that can help us save our planet from our humanity’s carbon footprint. All we needed was the technology that can help us transform these sources into power. And now we have it: wind turbines, solar powers, etc.
Less Paper Waste
Corporate pollution worldwide is one of the biggest contributors to the environmental concerns our planet is facing. And, one of the main types of waste businesses produce is paper waste. Yet, with innovative technology coming into the play, this can be changed too.
Nowadays, businesses can reduce their paper waste by using could-based storage technologies to store all their business and customer data. Not only that this can help with reducing paper waste in businesses worldwide, but it also brings several advantages to businesses including reduced costs, better data security, and better data management.
Technology can reduce paper waste in households too. For example, in most parts of the world, people no longer receive physical paper bills as they are sent by the providing companies in an electronic form.
Cutting Urban Pollution
One of the biggest challenges that our world is facing is the urban pollution from electricity waste and crowded traffic, especially in the metropolis of our world. It has already been mentioned how technology can help reduce pollution by allowing us to use renewable sources of energy.
Yet, air pollution from traffic is a huge problem that we are still struggling to stop to protect our environment. One highly debated tech innovation that promises to help our world with its environmental problems is the fifth generation of mobile internet.
5G is expected to be launched next year and specialists claim that it can change urban transportation forever. Experts believe that 5G can change urban mobilityinto a shared, electric, and connected one.
Also, technology has helped with the creation of electric vehicles,such as those from Tesla company, which can keep our towns and world clean by producing fewer emissions that contribute to air pollution and climate change.
Automated Farming Systems
Climate changes and the world’s growing population have brought one more challenge into the scene: feeding the growing population. Experts claim that the climate changes our planet is experiencing can have tremendous consequences in global food production. Some regions of our world have already been affected by climate changes leading to a decrease infood production, especially in the agriculture sector.
According to a 2012 report from the World Wildlife Fund, our world must produce more food in the next four decades to feed the world’s growing population than it needed in the last 8.000 years of agriculture all combined. This is a very concerning matter considering that our planet is struggling to offer us the natural resources we need to produce food.
However, technology, automated farming systems in particular, can help us continue to produce the food our humanity needs by innovating the farming sector.
Land And Ocean Waste Collection
Our humanity seems to have lost control over producing and properly managing global waste production. We are talking about filled landfills and global waters with plastic, metal and paper waste that affect both land and marine wildlife and contribute to the climate changes.
In fact, there is one more challenge that we face regarding managing global waste since China has announced its waste import ban. Until now, China has been importing about 56% of the world’s plastic and paper garbage to recycle. So, everybody is asking where will the world’s waste is going to go from now on?
However, China’s ban has led to a change of mentality about waste in many countries. For example, Denmark and Belgium both created an innovative tech system that will help them transform waste into energy. New Zealand’s government has embraced the concept of a circular economy to fight back waste problems. Also, many businesses have teamed up with companies that produce waste and recycling solutions such as Mil-tek in New Zealand to reduce their corporate waste.
The world’s trash had to go somewhere and many developed countries have found a way to use technology to maximize their capacity to recycle their hundreds of millions of tons of waste.
Technology can play a major role in helping humanity save our world. The green technology is a growing field that will continue to develop more and more innovative solutions for our world’s environmental problems.
