As if the iPhone wasn’t green enough with its polyvinyl chloride (PVC) void phone accessories, bromine free circuit board, mercury free display panel, energy efficient power charger, and recycled packaging, now, you can get green living tips through the phone’s applications.  

3^rdWhale, a sustainable living focused technology firm, has built an application using the iPhone’s Location Based Searching feature (similar to a global position system (GPS)), so that iPhone users can access a database of more than 10,000 green businesses. 

The initial application is launching in Vancouver (home to 3^rdWhale), and some of the greenest-minded cities in the USA including Seattle, Portland, San Francisco, and San Jose. After those cities beta test the application, Boston, Chicago, New York, Los Angeles, Austin, San Diego, and Santa Barbara will join the ranks. A world-wide launch is planned within the year once users provide information about the operation of the application and the best and latest eco-hot spots around town. For non-iPhone users, the eco application is expected to be available for the Google Android, Blackberry, and Symbian phones in late 2009. 

This feature fills an All-American niche: make it easy and convenient for us to change our habits. Sure, we can all get behind going green because it’s logically and morally the right thing to do, but, can we actually modify our habits to make green a lifestyle? Many of us have made small, incremental changes, like switching to CFLs, that they are starting to add up. With a digital list and supplemental mapping system showing where to buy organic food, and where to fill the car up with bio-diesel, going green just became as easy as Googling.