More than half of the American population likely made an environmentally focused New Year's resolution, according to a poll released by Tiller Research. Fifty-three percent of American adults are committed to a greener new year, an increase from 49 percent of respondents two years ago.

Many are making ecofriendly efforts as part of day-to-day routines. In fact, almost half of the 1,000 polled by Matthew Greenwald & Associates said they purchased products made by an environmentally or socially responsible company, and at least half said they avoided products thought to potentially harm the environment. Eighty-four percent of respondents said they plan to recycle more.

From recycling to reuse of everything from shopping bags to cell phones—these are easy ways to be ecofriendly . What’s your green resolution for this year?

Today’s networks are consuming more energy to meet increasing demand while using more energy than required. A new green consortium has set an ambitious five-year goal of making communications networks 1,000 times more energy-efficient than they are today. Called Green Touch™, this new group effort is led by Bell Labs, with 14 other private operators, as well as several government agencies, already on board.

 The Green Touch initiative represents an industry shift of thinking—from optimizing networks for maximum capacity to optimizing them for energy efficiency. The thousand-fold reduction is roughly equivalent to being able to power the world’s communications networks, including the Internet, for three years using the same amount of energy that it currently takes to run them for a single day. The Initiative aims to deliver a reference network architecture and demonstrations of the key components required to realize this improvement.

Without this turnaround, the industry's energy usage is projected to double over the next 10 years. Bell Labs projects that our global networks can actually be 10,000 times more efficient than they are now.

The trend for building our current communications infrastructure has been to place priority on performance rather than efficiency. Changes like these may raise concerns that at first, this might result in increases in price or even losses in performance.

With movements like this and a conscious effort toward other green options such as reuse, we are well on our way to an eco-responsible future.

The first meeting of the consortium will be in February to address roles, responsibilities, and deliverables for 2010. 

It’s a simple fact: not all green is created equal these days. While reuse is sometimes confused with recycling, GreenCells customers know that it is actually the ultimate green choice. Why? For cell phones, reuse not only saves the manufacture of a new phone, it slows the harmful release of pollutants often associated with recycling electronic components. And it comes at a value, yet another benefit of green via reuse. GreenCells customers are buying our eco-friendly phones for half price and taking advantage of can’t-lose offerings like our 360° shipping, year warranty, and trade-in/trade-up program that make reuse a trusted, viable choice.

Saying no to new is now a worldwide trend, according to this year’s National Geographic Greendex study, which shows a rise in reuse in half of the 17 countries surveyed, including America, Canada, and Australia. With cell phones, those choosing to reuse are making the connection that the impact is significant. Everyone’s heard of the 100 million cell phones discarded annually. Each time we choose to extend the life of a cell phone, we slow the product life cycle down. Recent research shows that extending the service life of phones from one to four years decreases the environmental impact by about 40%. So if you’ve made a GreenCells purchase, flaunt your green phone. Reuse is eco-fashion at its best—smart, savvy, and here to stay.

Sunday Nov. 15 is America Recycles Day—an occasion that reminds us of the importance of the “three R’s”: recycle, reduce, and reuse.

According to the EPA, more than 100 million cell phones are discarded annually; and, in 2007, only 10 percent were recycled. GreenCells was founded to provide consumers a real alternative to this destructive cycle, by providing a better value through a solution focused on the core principle of environmental stewardship: reuse.

Why is reuse so critical? Reuse extends the life of a product before it gets to the recycling stage. While reuse addresses the challenges of waste reduction, it also supports a productive economy, advances source reduction, results in less hazardous waste, and creates less air and water pollution than making a new item. Finally, reuse creates an affordable supply of quality goods.

Reuse is an important focus of our eco-friendly efforts. Think reuse!

The first Android phone was rolled out in the U.S. only a year ago. With the introduction of different models from a number of manufacturers, the Android’s popularity has exploded. Android recently garnered a lot of attention with Verizon’s aggressive advertising of the debut of their first Android OS phone: the Motorola Droid. As the first handset to feature the Android 2.0 platform, the Droid has increased awareness of the Android OS and its potential.

At the heart of the Android phone experience are proprietary applications like Google Maps, GChat, Gmail, Google Voice and YouTube. Besides these applications, on its own, Android is not a revolutionary OS. Like the iPhone, Android relies on a large selection of applications. Currently, the Android app store has about 12,000 apps, compared to Apple’s recent announcement that the iPhone app store has passed the 100,000 mark.

The key element here is quality not quantity. Many of those apps are, to a great extent, useless. One example is, iBeer for the iPhone. This app will make your screen look like a pint of beer that is fully interactive. This app is clever, but mostly useless. The exciting moment will be when the top 500 apps for the iPhone find their way onto the Android platform, too. As more apps are made available to Android, an increasing number of customers and applications developers will be drawn to the Android.

The potential for the Android platform is substantial, and there has been a lot of talk about the future of the Android platform. Some see Android moving into other platforms such as DVRs, e-book readers, portable music players, and who knows what else. Looking ahead, Android may become a platform of choice for all our portable gadgets, seamlessly connecting us to the “cloud.”