iPhone App Finds Fairtrade Products

Packed with features, iPhones are today’s digital jack-of-all-trades. Tracking flights, music recognition and addictive games – these are just a few of the 50,000-plus downloadable apps on offer. But if you’re an iPhone-user looking for more than just organizers and fun time-killers on your gadget, and you’re concerned that purchases, like chocolate or coffee, are produced in developing regions under unethical or unsustainable conditions, or both – we’ve got the app for you!

Can Online Gamers Save Us All?

The geek shall inherit the earth. Or so Jane McGonigal would have it. The Californian-based game designer wants us all to play more online video games, and not just because they’re entertaining.

More online gamers means a better planet, says McGonigal, and she makes a lot of sense.

According to CNN, “…The cooperative skills and hopefulness that people learn while pecking away at online games like World of Warcraft will help our society address real-world problems like climate change and nuclear arms proliferation, she says. To get people to use less oil and mentor entrepreneurs in Africa, she also is developing games that merge the digital and real worlds.”

“My goal for the next decade is to try to make it as easy to save the world in real life as it is to save the world in online games,” she says.

Pool Pony for Don Quixote

These days if Don Quixote wanted to tilt at windmills, he’d have to swap his horse for a pool pony. As we race towards a low-carbon economy one of the biggest focuses is on offshore wind generators– and the UK is leading the charge.

If all goes to plan, by 2020, a sizable chunk of the UK’s electricity supply will be from harnessing wind, wave and tidal power at sea. New Scientist says that the most mature technology in the ‘offshore race’ is wind power, and there are already plans to set-up huge wind farms on the seabed around the UK.

Over the next decade up to 6,000 turbines covering thousands of square kilometres of ocean surface will hopefully be churning out about 30 gigawatts of power – supplying 25% of Britain’s electricity needs.

Solar Power Brings Smiles to Benin Villagers

Yarou Ganni smiles broadly. Standing in a big field of leafy cassava plants, she talks about the season’s bumper crops. Things are so good that she’s even made some extra money selling cassavas at the local market. Tonight her family will enjoy a rare treat – pounded yam.

Ganni lives in the Kalale District in the West African nation of Benin, which nudges up against Nigeria’s western border. Ganni’s village of Bessassi is a hot and humid place with less rain than surrounding regions. Life here is tough, and just surviving can be a daily struggle.