Sites You Should Know - Earth911

Every week, GreenPeaches brings you a very useful site that you can use to help green your lifestyle. Our picks may or may not relate directly to Atlanta but they will always be great tools. We hope that you add these to your bookmarks and visit them in the future.

This weeks site is Earth911 (www.earth911.com).  This site is a fantastic resource for locating places where you can recycle almost anything.  Their database is very large and thorough.  A search for places within 25 miles of Atlanta where you can recycle batternies yielded almost 70 results.  Many of which are easily accessible such as Office Depot, Best Buy and Batteries Plus.  I was able to find two places that will accept styrofoam and 33 businesses that will accept scrap metal. 

Another great tool is their iPhone app, iRecycle.  It interfaces with the same database that the online website does and is searchable based on your current location or any location you want to enter.  When I was going through my garage this week cleaning up to make room for all the new baby stuff, I decided to give the app a try and loved it.  I was able to find a place to recycle my old cell phones, batteries, scrap metal, clothing and a number of other items right from my phone. 

Using the Earth911 website is a no brainer when you are in doubt about what to do with something you are looking to get rid of that is bulky, hazardous or that has an alternative use.  We highly recommend the website and as far as green iPhone apps go, this is one of the best out there.

iPhone Apps for GreenPeaches

Now, we totally understand if you don’t own an iPhone so we apologize in advance that this post is not dedicated to you. However, if you do, you will already know that it's not the iPhone that sets you apart, it's the apps you have on the iPhone.  We have been looking high and low for apps that can help you be green in Atlanta. Although there aren’t too many out there that are solely dedicated to green topics, there are a lot that really help even if they don’t know it. Here are four that we found that are either great in their current form or could be great with a little bit of work.

Seafood Watch from the Monterrey Bay Aquarium

This app makes eating seafood for the eco-conscious much easier. The app is the online version of their printable wallet card and is much more in-depth. It divides the country up into regions and has an alphabetized list of seafood in that area. It uses the following three classifications; Best Choice, Good Alternative and Avoid. When you view a specific type of fish, it will give you a brief reason for the rating then it will go into a consumer note followed by a summary. An added plus is that you get a picture of the fish so the app almost doubles as a field guide.

ATL Traffic

Unfortunately, it is almost impossible to avoid it. So, the best thing you can do is know where it is and how long it’s going to keep you from where you want to go. The app taps you into the traffic cameras for all of the local freeways and streets (that have cams). You also can pipe into the road signs and see all of the local traffic alerts. This one is a must when you are on the road a lot. It will definitely help you avoid sitting helplessly in some traffic jams. We know, some of them are just going to be unavoidable.

Green Guide

We’re not too sure about this one yet but it is a great concept. The green guide takes consumer reviews and ranks thousands of consumer products on their environmental merits. Right now, they focus on Toys, Personal Care and Household Cleaners. They have ratings for over 60,000 products. The idea is great but I don’t know that the rankings are accurate. As an example, when comparing the top 5 Deodorants & Antiperspirants on the Green Guide to their respective rankings on the Environmental Working Group’s Cosmetics Database (www.cosmeticsdatabase.org) we found TK that ranked in the Lower TK percent. The idea is great but the jury is still out on this one. It will keep you away from really bad products though.

Maps

The maps app comes standard with the iPhone and is a lifesaver. It is pretty normal as far as map functions go and it interfaces with Google Maps. What makes maps green is the fact that you can save gas and time by finding the best route before ever getting into your car. It has saved us on many occasions. The app also will pipe into Google’s transit and walking directions databases if you prefer to use those modes instead of driving.

Here are some others that might be worth checking out:

Carbon Footprint

GreenMeterp

pConsumpt

MeterRead

Get Green

ShopGreen

Green You

Growing Up Green

Green Lemur

iLocovore

Gas Buddy

iGreen

Recycler