Name: Your smartphone is bad for the planet; these companies want to help
Uploaded: 2022-10-03
Duration: 9 min 6 s
Description: Companies like Samsung and Fairphone are focused on making products that use recycled and ethically-sourced materials.

Companies like Samsung and Fairphone are focused on making products that use recycled and ethically-sourced materials.

Your smartphone is bad for the planet; these companies want to help

Environment

Your smartphone is bad for the planet

Samsung and Fairphone are focused on making sustainable products.

there's an unsustainable consumption pattern that's happening. You know, we talk about fast fashion, but fast tech right at their phone, we strongly believe that we want our business to be a force for good and for us that means both environmentally socially, but also financially maybe it's coming off the pandemic, but I think the timing that is really right for these products and I think it's it's good for a company. But I think more importantly, I think it's good for the environment. If you're not considering social and environmental impacts when you're making business decisions, then you're not making fully informed business decisions. Mhm. The electronics industry is notorious for making thin light capable machines when you know, mobile computing started in the 80s. It wasn't something that came into the consciousness of corporations. You know, maybe we should think about the fact that this cobalt mine is in a place that may use a lot of child labor may use a lot of unclean energy to get it out of the earth. We still want thin light fast devices but there's a growing movement that is really interested in how sustainable something is in our few the rapid life cycles and the short lifetime of devices actually is the main problem um designing a device that is meant to last and also building the ecosystem around it that actually a device can last longer by introducing this longer term vision. Um I also start immediately tackling problems not only for the planet, but also for the people in this, in this supply chain. If you look at mobile products, about 80% of the life cycle, greenhouse gas impacts all the way from raw material extraction through production to use and then back around again is in production and so it doesn't make sense, you know, to be throwing these things away, I sat down with Mark Newton who is the head of sustainability for Samsung. Now, Samsung is a massive company. They don't just make smartphones and refrigerators and washing machines and home appliances, they also make semiconductors, they make battery packs for electric vehicles, they're a tremendous company. Their goals are pretty aggressive, so by 2030 they want to become net zero with consumer electronics, they have manufacturing plants, they have locations all over the world and that means that in order to become net zero, they have to essentially work with each individual country to raise up the infrastructure essentially. Samsung is sort of planting the flag and saying, okay, you know, we're going to do this and we're gonna make this happen, sustainability is crucial for tech because of the level of consumption and how integrated tech is into our everyday lives. You know, the most sustainable phone is the one that's in your pocket. It's the one that you can use and repair and change and swap and customize as technology gets better. Fair phone is a company that started in 2013 and their whole model is essentially to provide a smartphone experience, that you know, looks very similar to say, your iPhone in your pocket that incorporates sustainability recycling bility, repairability and even ensuring fair wages for workers Every year. We sell and buy their 4, 1.4 billion smartphones worldwide and we use them around 2-3 years and then after use less than 20% actually is handed in for recycling. It's actually a huge waste machine Plus also these rapid lifecycle said you can imagine the effect it has on the C. +02 and material use, but also the short term focus is quite a big influence on the people working in this supply chain. They're doing something in this space to innovate for long enough that larger companies are coming to them and being like, okay, what have you learned? How did you do this small part that you see here, it makes your phone shake and that's made of constant from here. What can we learn from you so that we can incorporate more sustainable products. You wanted a compromise to be as small as possible because for me, my goal as fair phone is I want my users that they love to keep their phone and use longer. Yet for me, what is beautiful? Is it beautiful? They're just thin thinner, thinnest or is it actually beautiful that say, hey, there's a design idea behind this that cares for the materials for the people working in the supply chain and for the environment. Ace is interesting because they're known mostly for gaming computers. They offer a lot of really innovative stuff in that space. They also work in chromebooks, things that kids use at schools. They're launching their very first sort of 30% post consumer recycled laptop called the vero. We've made sure that it is used to operate able so it's pretty easy to pop in more memory or in a gaming laptop to put a different graphic processor. And so I consider that table stakes today where the customers want that and the idea is over time, there's no premium, you know, it's chicken and the egg as you get scale and you get your production lines up the the added cost to have recycled plastics comes down and after a while it'll be just, you know, I think everyone will have green products. The question is how soon will people have it? We're ready now. And I think some of the competitions maybe a year or two behind Once, it's part of our design criteria. Um, just like energy efficiency and performance and all those things. Just as part of that trade off analysis that we do then it just becomes something that is ubiquitous with the product are buds to pro it has 90% recycled content in the plastic even one generation before we were like really proud to get 20% recycled content and so we know we can do it. I went into this story thinking why hasn't this happened? Like why haven't we seen more green products on the market, all of those sort of different groups are converging to move us towards the future that's a little bit more sustainable from an employment perspective, from a global supply chain perspective from an environmental perspective. The first step is that we want to raise awareness. So we uncover for that complex supply chain and figure out, hey, where are things going wrong? The second step is that we innovate in our company and our supply chain on solutions to the malpractices that we found. But then the third step is that we want to convene other industry players and convince other players, hey, we now have a scalable solution that works, join in one of the things that I'm seeing that's really driving a lot of this is investor interest in the idea that companies that are considering sustainability in their business model are better run companies. It can be commercially successful to make both ethical choices in your supply chain and indeed be a commercially successful company. But I think ultimately, you know, I don't think, I don't think that we're coming out with green product of higher margins and make more money. I think it's just that the market is going to be asking for green and rather being a slow or fast follow, we want to leave the market. I am quite hopeful and I also see the different actors. I see legislation upcoming. I see other companies also moving in this direction. So I really am hopeful that Fair phone is not going to be the exception like we are now, but that we in the in a few years time, this actually will be the more instead of the exception.