Telstra Invites Users to Go Smarter and Greener

Preoccupied with climate change and the impact people have on the environment, Australia's largest mobile carrier, Telstra, has recently launched a campaign and a website called “Smarter, greener, together.” This comes on the heels of a study showing that the telecommunications industry is capable of helping Australia reduce its yearly carbon emissions with about 5%, meaning with roughly 27 million carbon tons, by the beginning of 2015.

More exactly, by using services like video conferencing instead of driving or flying to meetings, Australian mobile users could reach the above-mentioned goal.

The “Smarter, greener, together” website features a calculator that allows you to find out how much carbon you can save when choosing telecommunications alternatives, over the now traditional driving or flying methods of doing business.

The new website also points out several opportunities for the telecoms industry to minimize carbon emissions. Among them, users have the already mentioned use of video conferencing, which can be done only via a high-speed mobile network (such as the one Telstra has) and only by users who own 3G handsets with video calling capabilities. The “Smarter, greener, together” website can be accessed at this address.

"Real solutions to climate change – ones that enable the shift to a low-carbon economy – require substantial investment in technology and in infrastructure. Certainly this includes ubiquitous high speed broadband,” declared Executive Director of Innovation Projects for the Digital Future at Telstra, Chloe Munro.

In order to go green, users can also opt for the simple action of recycling their old mobile phones. To find out more about this, you can visit the website of Mobile Muster, the official recycling program of Australia's mobile industry.

Telstra currently has around 9.5 million customers and, should all of them try to be more careful with the environment, then Australia could firmly make the first steps towards really becoming a green country, despite its high level of industrialization.