Smartphones recycled to fight against Deforestation

Rainforest Connection is a San Francisco based startup which is working for the noble cause of discouraging deforestation. It is doing so by recycling the old Smartphones into devices which can detect deforestation and alert the concerned authorities about poaching or illegal logging activity.

Rainforest Connection transforms the old Smartphones into autonomous, self-powered listening device which can pinpoint and detect destructive sounds like gunshots, chainsaws in the rainforest environment. The local authorities are alerted through a text message incase such voices are heard from any rainforest.

Each of these devices has a capacity of protecting about an area of forest so large that it can house over 1000 different species of animals and plants. The organization is also focusing on partnerships that empower indigenous people who are working hard to protect their homelands from logging, poaching and encroachment.

Rainforest Connection have also come up with a mobile app through which anyone who is interested in listening to the live sounds of the rainforest can do it from anywhere and anytime. They have a plan of releasing their web and mobile apps in late 2014.

According to the stats provided by the organization, each Rainforest Connection device can save enough trees from logging to prevent 15,000 metric tons of carbon dioxide being released in the environment. This figure is almost equivalent to taking around 3,000 cars off the road.

The organization not only recycles old Smartphones. Its solar panels are also manufactured from discarded crystalline silicon fragments.

The rainforest connection devices are installed and hidden high in the tree canopy. Each device can pick and detect destructive sounds up to 1 kilometer in the distance. The devices have been vigorously stress tested and manufactured to last indefinitely.



Most of the anti-deforestation efforts currently in use depend upon satellites. These satellites do not provide live updates which results in responders reaching too late on the activity site. But with Rainforest Connection all this is set to change. Its devices provide exact locations and times and that too instantly so that there is no loss of time in reaching the effected spot.

If a poacher finds the device and tries to disable it, the device has been programmed to send a text message to its responders about such action.