So, how exactly does one go about saving the rainforest with old cell phones?
After a visit to the rainforests of Borneo, physicist and engineer Topher White was struck by the sounds of the forest. In particular, the noises he couldn’t hear.
While on a walk, White and others came across an illegal logger sawing down a tree just a few hundred meters away from a ranger station.
This incident set White thinking that perhaps the best way to save the Earth’s precious rainforest is to listen to its loggers and poachers. And the innovation he came up with uses old cell phones to do this!
Great people becoming empowered to make a difference…
It’s hard to feel like our actions have an impact on solving a problem like deforestation. Yeah, we can choose to change our spending habits to stop the economic support of deforestation, but this doesn’t necessarily have an impact at the root of the problem.
If you have an old cell phone you want to give a second life saving the rainforest, you can send it to Rainforest Connection, and if the device doesn’t work for their needs, the donation will still go to supporting the project. You can check out how you can get involved with this project over on the Rainforest Connection website.
Topher White spends a lot of time walking in—and thinking about—the forest, and how quickly we’re losing it. So much so that he’s gotten a black eye from being smacked by flying tree branches.
But that’s just a small example of what the engineer is willing to endure to stop global deforestation. Founder of the San Francisco-based nonprofit Rainforest Connection, White has developed a simple but ingenious strategy: using old cell phones to listen for the sound of destruction.
Forests are disappearing worldwide, and fast: Swaths half the size of England are lost each year. The Amazon has lost close to one-fifth of its rain forest cover in the last four decades.
Forest loss not only harms wildlife, including many species that live nowhere else, it’s a big contributor to the greenhouse gas emissions that stoke climate change, accounting for about 17 percent of the world’s annual total.
“I didn’t know any of this stuff when I started,” says White, who began his journey in 2011, when he traveled to Indonesian Borneo to help dwindling gibbons.
“I just kind of thought it was about protecting the small areas and animals,” he recently told National Geographic. “But no, [deforestation is] actually one of the biggest contributors to climate change.”
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