Six Easy Ways to Change the World Without Leaving Your Desk

Everyone has their own theory about the End of the World. Science Fiction fans believe the earth will be swallowed up by a black hole, while Religious believers are adamant that one day their God will just decide time’s up in a wildly apocalyptic showdown. Myself, on the other hand, I’m positively certain that when the end does come, it will be man’s doing. Almost all of the world’s most serious issues are created by humankind; poverty, low resources and global warming are just some of them. As of now, the Doomsday Clock reads five minutes to midnight; but there are ways to turn that back. Even if you don’t have the time or energy to devote yourself to the world’s resurrection, there are a few smaller things you can do which, in volume, will have a great impact.

Change your search engine to www.Blackle.com

This is by far the easiest thing you can possibly do to benefit your planet. In fact, I expect everyone who reads this to do it straight away (no excuses – I gave up my ‘Pirates of the Caribbean’ themed start page for this, and so can you). So if you haven’t , in a flurry of clicks, run off to change it immediately, I can only assume it’s because you’re still skeptical. How can changing your start page really benefit the world? Well, as the name suggests, the Blackle homepage is totally black (save for the writing, which is a deep grey, but still easily readable). Based on a 2002 study from Roberson, we now know that ALL computers (even yours) take more energy to display an all-white screen than an all-black screen. Now, take a look at the Google homepage. White much? You do the math.

As of right now (it’ll increase significantly if I refresh it) my Blackle start page is telling me that Blackle users have collectively saved 822,218.883 Watt hours. Not only does it save energy, but I find that it’s also much easier on the eyes than a stark white screen.

Play Freerice

It’s a game! What more incentive do you need? There are two benefits that come from Freerice.com. Firstly, it donates a fair amount of rice to impoverished areas, and secondly, it benefits YOU by making you smarter. You don’t even need to sign up, just type in the web address and play. It’s basically a trivia/vocabulary game (you can choose – there are plenty of categories), and every time you get an answer right (they’re relatively easy) Freerice automatically donates 20 grains of rice to charity. Sure, that doesn’t sound like much, but Freerice saves and tracks your total “donations” even after you turn off your computer, and it doesn’t take long for your total to skyrocket! I’ve been playing casually on-and-off for only a couple months, and my total is already 13540 grains of rice. Not only that, my vocabulary has undergone prominent proliferation.