The Idea
In efforts to help bridge the Digital Divide, Thembalethu Home-Based Care recently received a generous donation of computers and funding to equip their facility...
Background
This year, the blogosphere welcomed a healthy debate about the amount of energy that can be saved by turning a web-site a darker color...
What You Can Do
Support Thembalethu
Turn The Web Black is a philanthropic project spearheaded by the South African NGO Thembalethu. In addition to helping decrease the negative effects technology can have on the environment by becoming a project participant...
The NGO - Thembalethu
Nestled in the isolated South African Nkomazi Region where the HIV rate has reached an alarming 50%, Thembalethu Home Based Care is an organization which aims to offer a haven of hope and love...
More Information
For more information on the various initiatives of Thembalethu or Turn the Web Black please email us at: contact@TurnTheWebBlack.org
Background
This year, the blogosphere welcomed a healthy debate about the amount of energy that can be saved by turning a web-site a darker color. Figures released by the United States Department of Energy explained that white and bright displayed colors on a computer drain up to 20% more power than black or dark colors. An all white web-page uses roughly 74 watts to project an image, while an all black pages utilizes only 59 watts.
Keep in mind the energy conservation only affects people that are using CRT monitors - these monitors, however, are ubiquitous in the African continent in the rare event that a computer is even present. The low-prices of used CRTs are often times the only option Africans can afford for their computing needs, if at all. It was argued in the blogosphere, however, that turning a web-site a darker shade would not produce a nominal return for the effort. This simply is not true. Turn The Web Black was created to de-bunk those comments and show how turning your website a darker shade can electrify one of the most destitute corners of the world. It's also created to spread awareness on the idea that small efforts can produce monumental change and progress in some of the world's most impoverished corners.
It was reported that if Google turned their website black 3,000 megawatt hours would be conserved in a year, equating to $75,000 USD. This converts to over $500,000 South African Rand. This money conservation is from one web-site turning their site black. Google is large - but the Internet community is larger. Those electrical savings, in theory, could be used to provide families with basic lighting in the Nkomazi Region of South Africa where 30% of domestic housing is electrically powerless.
