Five new eco-friendly apps we love!

We’ve been busy updating our iPhones, iPads, and iPod touch lately with a whole bunch of new eco-friendly, sustainable apps that we totally love. Here are our favourites:

GoodGuide

Free; available here

The GoodGuide app helps users figure out which products are green, safe for themselves and the environment, and are sustainable to boot. The app includes a barcode scanner that gives you access the ratings that GoodGuide delivers, using health, scientific, environmental, and social ratings for over 170,000 products. Users can narrow it down to what they want to search for, such as prioritizing nutrition, healthy ingredients, animal welfare, human welfare and rights, climate change, sustainability, organics, and more. The products, whether it is food, personal care, home cleaners, baby items, children’s items, pet food, clothing, and more are given a grade of passing or failing based on your chosen criteria. It also lets your create personalized shopping lists, making choosing eco-friendly options a breeze.

iViro

Free; available here

iViro makes home energy analysis easy and quick, letting you save money and reduce your home’s eco-footprint by doing a full home energy analysis and helping you implement the right changes. Users can perform a detailed energy analysis with no prior technical experience, or, if time doesn’t allow, a quick one, too. With a few easy steps, you can gather information on your home’s costs on heating, cooling, lighting, hot water and appliance energy consumption, complete with yearly cost estimates and CO2 emission estimates. The app takes into account your home’s design, the specific heating and cooling equipment it uses, local weather conditions, the number of skylights, doors, and windows, whether your appliances are energy efficient, and various energy prices in your area.

Seafood Watch

Free; available here

Seafood Watch makes recommendations to help users choose ocean-friendly seafood both at the store and while dining out. The app is always updated with the latest recommendations for seafood and sushi, and lists complete information about how each item should be fished or farmed. It provides free, up-to-date recommendation and uses your phone’s GPS for regional information. You can help refine the search using “Best Choice,” “Good Alternative” or “Avoid” rankings, and sushi options are listed both by Japanese and market names to avoid any form of confusion. Even better, the new Project FishMap feature lets you contribute to the app by adding the names of restaurants and stores where you’ve found ocean-friendly seafood and locate businesses where others have found sustainable seafood

Carticipate

Free; available here

App users can save money on gas while helping the environment by “carticipating” with friends, family, groups, or co-workers. This app lets you coordinate driving plans, carpool, or a ride share by indicating where you are going, when, and post your ride. You can then match with other users who meet your needs. The scheduler allows you to create and manage multiple trips, and it comes with a list of pre-loaded example destinations which you can edit, delete, or add for your own custom locations.

iGreenpeace

Free; available here

Fun for kids, this Greenpeace app helps support various Greenpeace campaigns with Alex the Penguin, a character who loves good food, friends, playing games and saving the planet. He lives at the South Pole and is experiencing problems due to global warming, and is trying to create change. Kids can have fun using the Penguin Clap Game! Tap and clap with Alex the Penguin and see how long you can last. Other users can about up-to-date Greenpeace news from around the world, find the tools to be an online-activist, and have opportunities to donate to support Greenpeace campaigns to save people, penguins, and the planet.