What is Greentech? A guide to green technology
Today, everyone wants to be green and go green: from banks and petrol stations to customers and farmers. While being green when it comes to doing your recycling and switching off the lights sounds obvious, there are some parts of it that can be a bit more complex. And Greentech is one of them.
This is the reason why we prepared a short guide to green technology. Let’s dive into the world of Greentech, cleantech and green software to learn more about what they are and their impact on the world we live in.
The main goals of Greentech
While the main goal of Greentech is to minimalise the negative impact of new technologies on the planet, the specific goals also include:
- sustainability, meaning fulling our needs in a way that does not have a negative impact on our environment;
- innovation, meaning finding new and more efficient ways to replace existing technologies with eco-friendly ones;
- viability, meaning adopting new methods of green technology and creating new jobs that facilitate them;
- source reduction, meaning reducing the consumption of resources, waste, and pollution.
The most important areas of Greentech
Greentech is a complex and extensive umbrella that covers many fields linked with the environment and technology. Some of the most important areas of Greentech are:
- Environmentally preferred purchasing
Environmentally preferred purchasing is a policy according to which governments and other entities should purchase goods created through energy-efficient means of production.
- Green building
Green building focuses on sustainability of building processes. It covers environmentally friendly building materials, choosing the right places for the constructions, and using sustainable ways of work.
- Green chemistry
The main aim of green chemistry is to design new chemicals that could replace the ones which have negative impact on the environment.
- Green nanotechnology
Green nanotechnology sits somewhere between green chemistry and green engineering. Its main aim is to produce new nanomaterials which would minimalise negative impact we have on the planet.
- Green energy production
Green energy production focuses on the development of new ways of electricity and fuel production, which use renewable energy sources. In the future, those renewable energy sources should replace fossil fuels and eliminate their destructive production manners.
- Green software
Being green when it comes to software means using IT solutions that has minimal impact on the environment. Sustainable software helps implement essential changes much quicker and more effectively. To measure its eco-friendliness and to spread best practices of using it, IT experts came up with the 8 principles of Sustainable Software Engineering, which help establish whether the software we use is really green. To learn more visit Microsoft’s “The Principles of Sustainable Software Engineering”.
Examples of Greentech
You may not realise that at first, but today we are surrounded by Greentech in almost every aspect of our lives. Here are just some of the examples of Greentech around you:
- Solar panels which you can see on many roofs. They generate solar energy and reduce the overall cost of energy for the homeowners.
- Electric vehicles which have been introduced recently and are becoming more and more popular. Fully electric cars reduce the very negative impact of gas vehicles on our planet.
- Cloud storage which enables users to store huge amounts of data on safe and easily accessible servers. It replaced hard drives which consume massive amounts of electricity.
- LED lighting which uses less energy than traditional incandescent and is a great way of starting your adventure with becoming greener.
To learn more about the ways we can use technology to save the planet, have a look here.
Why is Greentech so important?
The negative impact we have on the planet have been discussed widely and is a well-known fact. With so much technology that surrounds us every day, it becomes more important than ever to really take the environmental issues seriously. And Greentech is a fantastic way of doing it. The more environmentally friendly innovations we come up with and use on daily basis, the less polluted our planet will become. This, in consequence, will lead to a better air we breathe, the better food we eat and the better life we live.
Simply put, Greentech helps to address the problem of the global warming, provides us with clean energy and makes our lives and places we live in more sustainable.
The future of green technology
In today’s fast developing world, everything we do to save the environment will have an impact on how we live in the future. And by the future we don’t mean 50 years from now on. Our future is now and it’s us who are creating it. This is why so many companies around the world keep investing in Greentech and take it more seriously every day.
From a purely business-wise angle, Greentech is also a great niche to fill when looking for ideas for a new, sustainable start-up to develop!
Be green with Future Processing
Are you keen to become greener and more environmentally friendly? Even a small step you take may mean a lot to our planted. And greener IT-solutions you use every day are a great way to start caring for those issues.