It was finally time for me to take on the hunt for the best green iPhone app. I recycle even when it means lugging coffee cups for blocks, buying all of my produce at farmers’ markets at least twice a week, and I have even started buying $5 boxes of 13 rolled compostable trash bags (to the chagrin of my girlfriend’s endlessly rolling eyes). I am attempting to be the Ahab of the Sustainability Sea, ceaselessly searching for coffee shops with eco-friendly cups, co-op bike shops, and products that have designed their end-life cycle. Amidst the search I spotted 3rdWhale, the great green ridge of social media mixed with GPS – like an exclusively green Yelp!

Ahem, let me step down from my all-natural, chemical-free soap-box, and give you the gist of 3rdWhale. It was created by 3^rd Whale Media Inc and lists green businesses in six categories – Health and Wellness, Food, Eco Travel, Retail, Transportation, and Service, so naturally I chose Transportation. Each category then lists subcategories; Transportation breaks down into bicycles, dealership and rental, fuel, public transit, and taxis, and as they didn’t mention seagoing vessels, obviously I chose bicycles. Then, you specify walking distance, biking distance, or driving distance to narrow your search results. The app gives you a map and listings based on GPS, but you can also search by zip code. 3^rd Whale is an ambitious app attempting to make every day a little greener.

I searched. I searched my heart out. I looked for cafes, groceries stores, bike shops, bookstores, you name it. And you know what I found? Not enough. The interface is quite easy to navigate, with a startup screen where you specify your options and bottom tabs for shopping green, tips for living green, a login feature (where you can add a business if it isn’t listed), and a search feature. However, this does not make up for the fact that I cannot find a single independent coffee shop within 20 miles of me; my green compass just wasn’t locating it. I walked a few blocks to my favorite local caffeine dealer. GPS? LMAO ASAP!

I then realized that the problem didn’t lie within the app. The problem was simply that there weren’t enough posts. This is partially due to the nature of the sustainable business niche. So here’s my catch-22: I would love to use this app once more people have updated it, but if everyone waits for others to update it, we will never use it. I’ll just bite the spear gun and do my part by updating my local sustainable businesses and pray that everyone else will join me. Then we can all hold hands and sing kumbaya around a recycled drum circle.

In my search-induced annoyance I navigated user-created posts by clicking the Live Green button on the bottom bar. Live updating streams of how to be a better human on our planet splashed me in the face with green knowledge. These are wonderfully helpful, but there is no search feature within them, so if you find something special hold on to it, otherwise it will be lost in the wake of the sustainable torrent flowing through it. I found a nice review on lightbulbs and quickly lost it later, never to find it again. I’m sure this will be fixed in the next version. This is quite nice though because it’s also user created content via CreativeCitizen.

So, overall, I was happy for my iPhone to catch 3rdWhale, despite my slight annoyance that it hasn’t fully grown in popularity yet. I’ll do my part, if you do yours (and if you do, this app gets a 5 star rating in my e-book).