Is YouTube eco-friendly?
With 48 hours of video content uploaded every minute, the site requires huge amounts of storage and other computation—all of which consumes electricity. Google, which owns YouTube, goes to great efforts to green its data centers. But the best way YouTube addresses its own environmental impact is with the environmental videos it makes accessible to the world.
Here’s a roundup of the best recent videos the Daily Dot found.
For the scientifically curious, HouseholdHacker shows off how to make the “world’s cheapest and easiest refrigerator” in the science tutorial “Flower Pot Fridge.”
Host Dylan Hart goes through the refrigerator-building process step by step, and even displays temperature data to prove the effectiveness of the Flower Pot Fridge. Hart closes the video by examining the global implications of this DIY cooling unit:
“Think about all those countries that don’t have electricity. You could use this to chill vegetables, fruits, medical supplies… in fact, applying this ancient technology across third-world countries has resulted in a 50% income increase to many women across the world.”
If you’re more of a casual environmental who’s comfortable in your own consumerism, check out Juicystar07’s “Easy Ways to Be Eco Friendly.”
Juicystar07 opens her video by discussing her erroneous impression that one has to spend money to be eco-friendly. Besides age-old tips like conserving water when brushing teeth, turning off household lights, and unplugging electronics, Juicystar07 highlights three tips of her own (skip the first 5 minutes to get to her tips).
Juicystar07 gushes over her water Bobble, stresses using environmentally friendly makeup and beauty products (list begins 6 minutes in), and reminds consumers to bring their own bags to the grocery store or mall.
If you’re more into the philosophical side of the environmental debate, check out “Your Lawn is EVIL” by John Hank of the vlogbrothers.
John Hank reminds the viewer how much water is wasted keeping lawns looking pristine (30% of our drinking water supply!), theorizes about the American lawn being an “insane” status quo bias and calls lawns “a terrible idea.” The video is less than four minutes long, but packed with thought-provoking content.
There are plenty of organic planting and gardening tutorials, but for the experimental foodies (or survivalists) out there, the ChowHound channel on YouTube has a couple of videos on edible plants in your backyard.
Iso Rabins, the founder of ForageSF, gives a brief history of a popular foraged foodstuff in “CHOW Tip: What is Miner’s Lettuce?”
ForageSF describes itself as a “wild foods community” in the San Francisco Bay area offering a market, dinner meetups and edible food walks.
Or, if you’d rather eat flowers, here’s a CHOW video on the best edible flowers to plant in your garden.
Let them eat green.