The Green Current: Rethinking How We Charge!

Last year, I was part of a fellowship called Odyssey. Their mission and goal was to expose students to different careers and domains, and help them find what they were truly passionate about. As part of their one-year program, they had a Basecamp in June, which was in Bangalore. It was to help us explore the world of work, visit the offices of global companies, and understand what goes into the development of firms working in entrepreneurship, finance, artificial intelligence, and design. To encapsulate our experience, we also worked with our teammates and build a documentary together, showcasing our learning, highlights, fun, ideas, and motivational moments throughout the journey. It was an amazing trip, and I learnt a lot from it. It was such a heartwarming experience to bond with all our mentors, make new friends, and be together on a journey that helped us take a peek into our possible futures.

Every day, throughout the time I was working on the documentary, and talking to my parents, I realized that my mobile phone's battery was going low. And most days, I used to not charge it to a high amount in the morning, so throughout the day, it dropped to dangerous levels of 2%, 1%, and sometimes even ran out. One day, when I was recording footage for the documentary, my phone completely ran out of charge. I wasn't worried initially, as this had happened multiple times. Then, I am grateful to one of my peers that lended me a power bank and cable. I connected my phone, and I was waiting for it to restart. I waited a minute. Then 5 minutes. Then 10 minutes. And in the whole bus ride to a company's office, the phone did not jump-start again. I was worried, and scared, as I had no way to communicate with my mother or father (over 2,000 km away from them), and could not even work with my teammate on our project, as it was on my phone.

When we got back to the hotel, I plugged it in to my charger, connected to our bedside plug point. And despite leaving it for about an hour on charge, it did not start at all. I am extremely grateful to one of our mentors, who put so much time, effort and dedication to fix my phone, and change the charging socket, which was damaged, so a massive thank you to our ma'am for your immense support and guidance. It was after this incident which I thought: is there actually more to charging a phone, and are there some things I need to be very careful about when I plug it in? So today, let's explore some tips on how to charge your phone safely and sustainably, so it never runs out, while conserving and optimizing our energy use with the planet in mind!

Firstly, try and always charge your phone between 20% and 80%. If we charge our phones to a 100% each time, it puts a lot of internal stress on our phone's lithium ion battery, reducing its longevity, meaning it will need to be replaced more frequently. If there are fewer batteries getting damaged, it will reduce the toxic e-waste that is hard to recycle. This also means there will be reductions in lithium mining (which is very harmful for the environment as it releases harmful gases and chemicals, as well as depletes groundwater supply). Along with charging your phone upto 80%, try not to let it drop below 20% (the mistake I made :) as this also puts extra stress on the battery, decreasing its capacity and lifespan.

Secondly, we must always unplug the phone from the charger when we're done. Although there are systems in place to prevent overcharging, it can still be damaging to the phone's battery if left on charge for too long. Another fascinating thing I learnt was, chargers that remain plugged in consume small amounts of electricity known as vampire power, and across millions of households - that's a lot of energy wasted. In India, annually, 20,000-30,000 gigawatt-hours of electricity are estimated to be wasted due to vampire power. So, we can help conserve a lot of energy by unplugging our adapters and charging cables, as well as spread awareness in our communities!

Lastly, we can implement energy-efficient habits while charging our phones: putting our phones on Airplane Mode, disconnecting our phone from Wi-Fi, and closing all open apps while charging our phones reduces load on the battery, making charging faster and more efficient. This reduces the amount of energy we consume while charging, also reducing fossil fuel emissions, helping preserve ecosystems!

After my eye-opening experience in Bangalore, I feel inspired and motivated that we can all adopt these small habits while charging our devices, to help them last longer throughout the day, making our work and communication more efficient, while also conserving energy and electricity, promoting environmental health for a greener tomorrow!