What is Rainforest Connection?
If we ever think about the environmental impact of our upgrade addiction, it's usually to berate ourselves for the damage it does. But there is an option for your old mobile that will not only reduce waste, but actively help to preserve some of the most threatened habitats in the world.
In the last 50 years, 17% of the Amazon rainforest has been destroyed – partly by climate change, but much of it through illegal logging to develop farmland. This is a terrible loss by itself, but it also deprives indigenous tribes of their homes and drives rare species of plants and animals to extinction. There are even wider-reaching effects too: because forests act as a carbon sink, the more we lose, the more CO2 is released into the atmosphere and the greater the potential for global warming.
But there is a way to protect the rainforests, and your old phone could be part of it, thanks to the charity Rainforest Connection. We spoke to CEO Topher White about how your discarded handset could help to save the world.
Guardian angels
Loggers can often be stopped just by warning them off, but the small number of people trying to catch them can't be everywhere at once, especially in an area as vast as the Amazon. That's where Rainforest Connection comes in, with its ingenious Guardian devices.
Each phone is placed inside one of these, which White describes as "a fancy enclosure for protecting a cellphone, giving it a high-power microphone and an extra antenna, and powering it – which is of course the hard part."
The Guardians sit in the trees, listening out for logging activity. The high-powered microphones they contain can pick up the sound of chainsaws and vehicles up to 1km away. When activity is detected, forest rangers can travel to the location and confront the loggers.
These smartphone guardians are currently protecting areas of rainforest in Brazil, Cameroon and Sumatra, and Rainforest Connection plans to expand the project to Ecuador later this year.
"Simply having someone show up in real time and saying 'you can't be here' and pushing the loggers on their way was an impressive enough event for them to never come back. We don't want to demonise loggers – for the most part they're just doing a job. The safer we can make it for everybody the better."
Safer for indigenous peoples such as the Tembé, who live on a small reserve in the Amazon. "Their survival is tied to the land – it may not be their primary purpose to protect it, but by being there they are able to keep the land more or less persevered," says White.
"The issue is, as more areas around them get damaged and there's increasing encroachment from outside groups, there's more and more pressure on them."
"The Tembé used to inhabit a much larger area, but now there's only about 15,000 of them left and they've been squeezed onto this one reserve that's about 6,000km square. They're pretty much surrounded on all sides by groups that are trying to come in and cut the trees down."
The biggest issue for Rainforest Connection is powering the Guardians. They run on solar energy, and as densely-shaded rainforests aren't the most friendly environment for solar panels the devices have to be carefully positioned.
"Most [solar panels] you see on roofs are very fussy about the shadows you put on them. Even if just a tree branch is in the way it can reduce the power up by to 90%," says White. "In the forest this is the real problem – it's 90% shadow and 10% sunlight. You occasionally have these rays of sunlight coming through the canopy, but they only last for a few minutes."
Those small rays of light are called sun flecks, and they're the only source of power White and his colleagues have to work with. Each guardian has an array of several panels, which are configured to capture the sun flecks when they break through.
"As long as sunlight hits any three or four of these panels then it'll be generating power for the phone," adds White. "One should be able to create more energy then the phone will need over a 24-hour period, but it takes a lot of power to transmit data over these great distances, so we're trying to generate more than 25 watt hours in single day."
Tune in, turn on
So why are smartphones the best devices to sit in a tree in the middle of the rainforest?
"The reason we're using phones is because we try to use what's already there," says White. "Hundreds of millions of phones are being thrown away around the world each year, which are ready to connect up to networks. The cellphone network is not great in these areas, but it's good enough for what we're trying to do."
It's not just the hardware that makes smartphones ideal for the job though. "Phones are great as they're the most popular development platform in the world.," says White. "It's such a robust ecosystem, and we're able to plug into that and make it work."
There's an app for that
The Guardians project has had about an unexpected benefit for Rainforest Connection: the charity now maintains live audio streams from rainforests around the globe.
White says: "What we essentially have is a real-time stream of really remote, crazy places around the world. We thought this was something people would want to listen in to, to show them that the rainforest is a really amazing place, but it's also a way for us to engage people in ways we haven't done before, and teach them more about what's going on."
Rainforest Connection aims to release an app for iOS and Android in the coming months that will enable you to listen in to different streams from rainforests around the world. It's more than just a live version of those Sounds of the Rainforest relaxation CDs, however: listeners will also be able to keep an ear out for the sounds of logging activity, wherever they're tuning in from.
"We want people to be able to hear the difference between a rainforest in Africa, Indonesia and Brazil, all right there at the touch of a button," says White. "If you want to use it to put your kid to sleep or as ambient noise, that's fine – but if you want to listen out for a chainsaw or a vehicle driving past, that would also be helpful."
What you can do to help
People around the world are concerned about the destruction of the rainforests, but they tend to see it as a problem for governments and charities, rather than one they can do something about themselves. Rainforest Connection is changing that – so how can people get involved?
To start with, you can donate that old phone that's buried at the bottom of a box of files. "The phones that go up in the trees don't have to be incredibly powerful," explains White. "They don't need big screens and stuff – we tend to use the older Android phones up there."
White says the most regularly used phones in the trees are the Huawei U8180, thanks to a big donation from a Chinese source. "The newer phones that people send in are incredibly useful as well, as we use them to equip the rangers," he adds.
"A lot of the rangers just receive SMS messages, but some have an app for Android and iOS that enables them to get notifications, see locations on a map and coordinate with other rangers to arrive at a logging site together."
Donating your phone isn't the only way in which you can help. If you're an experienced coder, charities such as Rainforest Connection could do with your time and expertise.
"We're looking for people who are interested in working on some fascinating problems," says White. "At the moment we're on a volunteer basis, and we want to find people who can use their Android skills in the forest with the Tembé warriors."
"Coding should be an adventure, not just from an intellectual standpoint but from a real life one as well. If you're looking for an adventure, get in touch."
So the next time you're disposing of your old smartphone, stop and think about what else it could do in another, very different life. Projects like Rainforest Connection can't stop the destruction of the rainforests overnight, but your phone could play a part – and it could even help to save lives. Visit the Rainforest Connection website to find out how.
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