What does a handset that is responsible resemble?

Fairphone has developed a device that owners can fix themselves in an effort to cut down on global electronic waste. Why is its engineering so environmentally friendly?

Bas van Abel declares, holding a tiny, circular portion aloft,” This is the camera of my phone.” Using a little hammer, he just took it out of his smartphone.

He properly disassembles his whole cellphone, placing the lens next to his mobile device, USB port, screen, and loudspeaker.” There’s eight components in full which can be removed and replaced,” he says.

The French social media company Fairphone, which claims to have created” the world’s most responsible smartphone,” was co-founded by Van Abel. But how long-lasting is a smartphone be when it’s made up of intricate parts and unique metals from all over the globe?

Fairphone, an Amsterdam-based company founded in 2013, makes Android phones that can be easily exchanged, customized, and repaired by their masters. Fairphone wants to help cut down on electrical waste by making it possible and encouraging people to resolve their phones rather than discarding them as soon as a part breaks.

The spare supply with the fastest growth in the world is e-waste. According to the United Nations Environment Programme, an estimated 50 million tonnes of electrical waste are produced annually worldwide, which weighs more than all business airliners ever produced. Only 20 % of that trash is recycled.

As the demand for portable equipment and smartphones rises, the pile of e-waste is also expanding. According to the World Economic Forum, monthly electrical waste production will more than twice to 120 million kilos by 2050.

According to estimates from the French non-profit The WEEE Forum, which examines electronic waste, 5.3 billion mobile phones were discarded in 2022. In the US, individuals replace their apps on average every 18 months as new models with improved capabilities are introduced. The majority of devices today are sealed units, which are very expensive and difficult to repair. If damaged components are fixed, they may also create error messages.

By selling devices with a longer working life, Fairphone hopes to break this pattern.

According to van Abel,” we make apps repairable so you can use them for a very long time.” ” It’s a pretty straightforward calculation: if you use the telephone twice as long, you produce half as many devices and half the amount of spend.”

According to the UK non-profit Restart Project, extending a smartphone’s life by 33 % may reduce carbon emissions comparable to those of Ireland.

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The core of Fairphone’s quest is sustainability. According to van Abel,” We use fairtrade gold and silver and 100 % recycled plastic in all of our phones.”

However, not all of the components in Fairphone types are long-lasting. The Fairphone 5 is made of 40 different materials, but just 14 of them—42 % of the phone’s total weight—are ethically and responsibly sourced. Only 70 % of those 14 organic materials are recycled or fair trade supplies. Air, water, and soil can become contaminated as a result of the mine of rare earth elements used by Fairphone and another laptop manufacturers.

Experts said Fairphone could enhance its sustainability credentials by obtaining more materials from ethical, qualified sources and creating phones that are both expandable and repairable in an impartial review of the business. According to Van Abel, Fairphone has increased the number of materials it uses from honest and responsible sources from eight to 14, and there are plans to keep growing.

According to him,” we concentrate on the 14 components where we see the greatest potential for improvement and greatest benefits to people and the environment.”

Enhancing social working conditions throughout the entire supply chain is one of Fairphone’s goals. The social enterprise started as an activism campaign in 2009 to raise awareness of conflict minerals being mined in the Democratic Republic of the Congo ( DRC ). According to van Abel, Fairphone now procures certified conflict-free metal and tungsten from mines in DRC and collaborates with producers to guarantee good working conditions in the mills and factories. All employees are also paid a living pay.

Despite its aspirations, Fairphone has sold about 550, 000 cellular phones since its launch, making it a relatively small player in the market. To put this into perspective, in 2022, more than 232 million smartphones were sold globally. Fairphone, according to van Abel, is attempting to demonstrate that businesses can make a profit by selling environmentally friendly phones.

Sustainability, nonetheless, has a higher cost. The most recent Fairphone model is £649 ( €699 ). According to van Abel, part of this is due to Fairphone having to construct all in-house. There is n’t a single company in the world that supports long-lasting phones, so he claims that we handle all software updates ourselves. ” We need to make a lot of investments in order to be ready to do what we want to.”

But, Fairphone’s maintenance plan is less expensive than that of its main rivals. Compared to the £80 ($ 99 ) fee Apple charges to replace an iPhone 15 battery and Samsung’s £109 ($ 135 ) fee for its Galaxy S23 phone, a new battery for the Fairphone 5 costs £39.95 ($ 49 ). A new Fairphone screen replacement costs £89.95 ($ 112 ), as opposed to Apple’s$ 289 ($ 359 ) fee and Samsung to get a new Galaxy S23 screen.

Additionally, Fairphone runs a recycling program for phones that are no longer repairable. However, according to Fairphone, only 30 to 50 percent of materials you usually be recovered during recycling. Recycling is seen by the business as a last resort.

Van Abel declares,” You want to modify all the pieces.” We place a lot of emphasis on longevity because” The last thing you want to do is recycle them.”

Smartphones, like many other contemporary electronic devices, have up to 70 different components, making them challenging to compost. In the disposal process, it can be challenging to separate glued-together, sleek, lightweight devices.

According to Cat Drew, chief design officer at the Design Council in the UK, where she oversees the sustainability initiative Design for Planet,” we have an instinctive understanding that technology and electronics are not [made ] to break down …that they are precious.” Because of this, a lot of us still have three or four ancient phones that could very well relate in museums. We know they are valuable, so we ca n’t bear to throw them away.

Up to five billion mobile phones may be underused in drawers all over the world, according to one market estimate.

According to Drew, the majority of phones ‘ designs prevent users from repairing them and using them for as long as possible. She adds that people prefer very thin, sleek devices, which are challenging to assemble, and that phones are n’t designed in a modular, easy-to-disassemble manner.

Electronics repair costs can also be “prohibitive.” She claims that fixing a laptop’s display can be more costly than purchasing one from scratch.

According to Joe Iles of the Ellen MacArthur Foundation, a non-profit organization that aims to facilitate the transition to an economic circular economy where goods and materials are reused and recycled as much as possible, creating recoverable phones is not” a technological challenge.” He claims that popular brands are beginning to adopt the innovation to create recoverable phones, which now exists. To day, the sales strategy for gadgets like smartphones has aimed to persuade customers to upgrade their gadget every few years, frequently long before the duration they are intended for. This is changing as fresh right-to-repair rules are being implemented in the US and Europe.

Nokia unveiled its first smartphone in February that users can fix themselves by exchanging out damaged components using virtual repair manuals. Customers can purchase Apple parts and tools to help them repair broken devices at Apple’s self-service repair business, where it has also begun publishing repairability manuals online.

However, Apple’s restoration program has come under fire for having too many limitations. Customers are required to provide a special serial number that is connected to each component of the system. The component may be changed unless it is remotely paired to the machine once more using manufacturer-provided application.

According to Iles, the real problem is altering the business model of the technology sector.

These supply chains have undergone decades of optimization in terms of how we produce, industry, and ship goods, according to him. It can be challenging to think or for businesses to actually participate in “breaking that]business model” or doing something that contradicts it.

Branding is a different challenge. According to van Abel, “growth and selling more phones are the cornerstones of the whole company model.” Marketing has done a great job of selling us things we do n’t really need.

Iles says,” Many people also get very excited about the launch of a new phone, but it is incredibly wasteful to get one every year just because the screen is slightly different size and the camera has significantly more megapixels.”

Iles continues,” There needs to be a business model in place that encourages individuals to repair their devices.” He adds that this could be accomplished if businesses provided customers with longer guarantees on the technology they purchase or free components, like batteries and screens.

According to Drew, switching to an electrical subscription model might encourage tech firms to prioritize conservation. ” Creating products that past and can be repaired is more important than selling more and more.”

However, in order to “level the playing field” and guarantee that businesses keep making money as they transition to a more lasting design, new laws and regulations will be needed, according to Drew.

By making it simpler for consumers to select recoverable products and have broken items fixed, many European nations are now working to combat throwaway culture. France began assigning a repairability report to specific electronic devices in 2021, such as televisions, smartphones, washing machines, laptops and lawn mowers. This index was determined by five factors, including the cost and availability of spare parts as well as how quickly the product can be disassembled. Tax cuts are available in Sweden for the repair of laundry machines, dishwashers, and bike as well as other household items.

There is also a push in the US to persuade customers to mend their gadgets.

An executive order that President Joe Biden lately signed attempts to grant US citizens the right to fix their own devices. In 2023, right-to-repair policy was introduced in Colorado, Minnesota, New York, and California. In order for consumers to restore their own devices, producers must supply them with the proper tools and components for seven years after production.

According to van Abel,” There is a lot of policy coming out now that makes manufacturers to change their behavior.” He hopes that Fairphone will spur additional changes in the smartphone market by demonstrating what is possible. He continues,” Our main objective is to make the whole device sector more sustainable.” ” We are raising awareness of issues in the supply network and developing remedies.”

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