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3 Ways Bluetooth Low Energy Saves the Planet

It’s Earth Day! It’s all about caring about the future of our planet, saving energy, and being green today. Why not contribute and involve Bluetooth Low Energy Beacons and the Internet of Things in this discussion?

Bluetooth Low Energy Beacons probably aren’t the first thing that you think of when you hear “Earth Day”, but that might be an oversight on your part. In fact Bluetooth Low Energy is one of the greenest power technologies in the modern day Internet of Things.

It’s not just green, though, it can also be used to save the planet, too! Check out some green and inspiring use cases that we’ve come up with and get to know ways to save the Earth.

Table of contents:

Ways to save the environment – paperless advertising

As our recently-written white paper shows, using proximity to find out what kind of context your consumers are in when you present them with an advertisement results in a startling increase in the ROI of your ads. So using beacon-based advertisements instead of traditional paper not only helps reduce waste, make your company greener, and help you be a part of a better tomorrow, it also makes more cold hard cash for your business!

Beacons can replace most traditional printed advertising materials with personalized and location-based notifications delivered directly to customers’ smartphones. The main reason for that is to make a company’s advertising efforts more efficient.
But there’s another extremely positive side effect. Every coupon and notification based business using beacons contributes to it, deliberately or not.

It’s paper’s usage reduction. Virtual notifications replacing printed coupons, leaflets, or guide maps reduce waste and save trees.
This is the most common action you may undertake to save the planet using beacons. Maybe you’ve been doing it already but never thought about it this way. Well, you’re aware now. You’re welcome 🙂

There are more other ways to save the Planet, and reduce waste, though. HotSpot, offering a parking mobile payment platform, got rid of paper receipts at a parking meter. Gino Rossi gave up using traditional plastic loyalty cards to reward its customers. Pointr prevented tons of cards from being thrown away after (or during) a conference, by enabling mobile business cards exchange.

Cutting down on power consumption as a way to save the Earth

When you imagine a smart home or office, you probably imagine doors opening and lights turning on as you approach and think: how convenient is that?

And you’re right.

But on the other hand, imagine how much energy you can save using electricity when you are actually at a given spot. You don’t have to remember to turn the lights, TV, or radio off every time you leave, you don’t have to struggle to remember whether you plugged your iron off or not.

Take a look at a domestic implementation that one of our customers did. Isn’t it super-luxurious and green at the same time?
Imagine a smart home on a macro-scale: automated city lights depending on the traffic, pollution alerts, and interactive bus stops. Complete monitoring of traffic, consumption, temperature, and more provided on a city-wide basis to keep all of the citizens and the decision makers well informed. These kinds of platforms exist in one dedicated silo or another right now, but beacons break open those silos of isolated information and bring knowledge and efficiency to a whole new level.

In addition to the low energy benefits of Bluetooth Low Energy itself, Kontakt.io is rolling out a special “Power Sleep” feature to its beacons on Earth Day as well, having created a mode whereby a beacon only uses .0003% of its usual broadcasting power. Set and schedule this Power Sleep functionality for a set of beacons and you can double the battery life or more! Read more about the new Power Sleep here.

With best-in-class hardware, unparalleled battery life,  and the unique value of our Cloud Beacons, using our beacons to do good in the IoT can also pay off karmically, too!

How do you use your beacons to save the Earth?