English schoolboy is saving the environment one pixel at a time

Most of us realize that we do not wield sufficient influence to force green initiatives upon large Chinese manufacturing facilities, to improve the energy efficiency of commercial generating facilities or to improve the fuel economy of shipping fleets and bus companies. Those of us who are conscientious about our environmental impact tend to lean towards more fuel efficient vehicles and appliances, to install compact fluorescent light bulbs in our homes. In this we are aided by market forces that impact upon our buying choices, particularly the increasingly high cost of energy. Another way we can minimize our energy footprint is by turning off our electric devices when they are not in use and unplugging invisible energy leeches. Yet with acrid smoke still rising from factories and tractor trailers and megawatts of energy literally being lost in transmission every day it is sometimes difficult to focus on the impact each and every one of us might have by slightly modifying our most routine behaviors.

This thirteen year old boy from Surrey, in the south of England, took this level of awareness to another level by really thinking outside of the proverbial search box. After reading Mark Ontkush’s blog (http://ecoiron.blogspot.com) suggesting that a black screen displays consumes roughly 20% less energy than white, Andrew Davy figured out that if all of Google’s roughly 200 million daily page views were displayed on black instead of white backgrounds, the total energy savings could amount to millions of megawatts worldwide. Young Andrew then proceeded to design a dark-hued interface built upon the complete Google search engine , essentially creating a fully functional greener Google. The resulting page: http://ecosmartsearch.com/ looks like this and you might want to bookmark it:

Of course the ramifications of this innovation stretch beyond a more energy efficient Google, as important as that may be. Just as we have learned to be more eco-conscious in our choice of disposable cups, clothing and other everyday items, web designers should also learn to use a darker color pallet in recognition of the cumulative effect such consciousness might have on reducing the overall energy impact of web browsing. In the same way that market forces impel large corporations and retail chains to be conspicuous about the recycling efforts, it should not be too much to imagine a culture in which web sites are rewarded for their environmental awareness and the web’s overall aesthetic shifts to the darker end of the spectrum. Original source for this article can be found here: get SURREY and check out Mark Ontkush’s self-proclaimed “definitive piece” on dark google interfaces here: http://ecoiron.blogspot.com/2007/08/history-in-january-2007-mark-ontkush.html Reuse…Save up to 90% off list price and save the environment too when you shop at UsedCisco.com By Steven Adams Product Content Manager for UsedCisco.com Sign up to receive the Green Your Network blog via email

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