Global Issues Club

Going online and searching on Google to look for information is a common habit that everyone does. But little do people know that Google isn’t a very caring search engine…for the environment. A group of 5th graders told me that Google actually consumes different amounts of energy. In fact, they use alot of energy. This is because Google’s pages contains many colors. One of the most energy-consuming color is white. The background for Google is plainly white and therefore, the simplest colors play a huge part in the environment.

Blackle, a similar search engine, has pages that do not contain many colors. The site is mostly black with light or dark shades. According to researchers, the reason why the color black is much more better is because it is the most energy-sufficent color used in computers, TV’s and many other electronics. That is why your TV, cellphone or computer screens turn black when you turn it off. In one year, Blackle could save 750 megawatt-hours a year. That is the same as ten thousand 100 watt light bulbs burning for 1 hour! :O This search engine counts how many watts are saved everytime.
Blackle is still developing to be as superior as Google. It lacks other things Google has. For examples such as image search, video search and more. Although this is the weakest strength Blackle carries, the process of searching the web is no different than many other search engines.

This is a very simple habit to start; go to Blackle to search the web instead of Google. Finding pictures and videos aren’t found in Blackle though. This energy-sufficent website is surely more Earth-friendly than many other sites you would find. Changing your usual search engine for searching the internet isn’t much to ask. Try to make this a habit…

The Blackle Homepage

 -Nabila

Well as we talked about how we were going too make change we decided to see if we could compost at our school.

Here is a place to start conversations and to share information on the 2 BIG questions that we first want to answer before we get started.

• What is composting? What do you need?
• Can we get the materials here in Doha?

Dump you info here and let’s see if our plan for a sustainable future will work or not.

- Leila

Hello all,

We have added a few sites to the Awareness links in the sidebar. I hope that we will have some time to view these sites togther and discuss what they are about, but in the meantime, why don’t you snoop around the sites, watch the short film and raise some questions here on the blog about what you see!

The first is about population growth and it is called 19.20.21

The other is called The Story of Stuff and is about Consumerism.

We look forward to hearing what you think…