Can a smartphone manufacturer calculate its carbon footprint?

Sib64

Hello Community,
It's a huge topic how to calculate your carbon footprint taking into account all the things we use every day.

So I translated this interesting article from a French website 'Les Numériques'.

Fairphone tries (really) to calculate the carbon footprint of a smartphone.

A complex calculation for an urgent reality.

What is the carbon footprint of my smartphone on the environment? Behind this simple question lies an ultra-complex calculation that Fairphone is trying to popularise, using its own phone as an example.

Fairphone is playing it safe. The Dutch company, which has made a speciality of selling repairable and ecologically responsible phones, has just published the life cycle assessment (LCA) of its latest phone, the Fairphone 4. The report's conclusions are obvious, but worth repeating: the best way to reduce the carbon footprint of your phone is to keep it as long as possible.

In the case of the Fairphone 4, using the phone for five years "could reduce the phone's annual carbon footprint by 31%". By using it for seven years, "emissions drop by 44%", according to the company. To put it more simply, the emissions emitted during the production of the phone are more environmentally "profitable" if you keep your phone for a long time. The total carbon footprint is gradually "diluted" by what the earth is able to absorb in CO2 every year.

What is Life Cycle Assessment (LCA)?
To assess the carbon footprint of its phone, Fairphone used a standardised calculation method called life cycle assessment. According to Ademe (the French Agency for Ecological Transition), a life cycle assessment (LCA) takes into account "the inventory of flows, from cradle to grave: extraction of energy and non-energy raw materials necessary for the manufacture of the product, distribution, use, collection and elimination towards the end-of-life channels, as well as all the transport phases". Rather than simply quantifying the CO2 emitted during the construction of the smartphone, the LCA will take into account the energy expended during the charging and disposal of the phone. This method has the advantage of being much more exhaustive than the simple calculation at the time of manufacture.

"The term 'flows' refers to everything that goes into the manufacture of the product and everything that goes out in terms of pollution. Among the incoming flows, we find, for example, those of materials and energy: iron resources, water, oil, gas. As for the outflows, they can correspond to waste, gaseous emissions, rejected liquids, etc.", states Ademe on its website (French Agency for the Environment and Energy Management).

How does the Fairphone 4's carbon footprint break down?
Fairphone's massive 215-page study assesses the role of each component in the phone's total carbon footprint. In terms of construction alone, the motherboard is unsurprisingly the most CO2 intensive, accounting for 71% of the emissions alone.

Exploded view of the Fairphone with the ecological impact of each component - © Fairphone

According to the study, the Fairphone 4 emits 43 kilograms of CO2 equivalent, a figure that is slightly up on the Fairphone 3 due to new features and components on board and "a higher proportion of air shipments during the Covid-19 period and the chip crisis". Unsurprisingly, "most of the emissions and consumption of finite resources taking place during the production of the device", Fairphone admits.

From the consumer's point of view, the best way to reduce its impact (besides keeping the phone for a long time) is to repair it as much as possible. "The emissions created by the production of these spare parts, their packaging and shipment to the user, or the sending of the device to a repair centre, are thus theoretically offset after only a few weeks of additional use of the repaired device," the company details.

Software liability
Finally, one of the last important building blocks for reducing the carbon footprint of smartphones is of course software monitoring. The longer a phone receives security updates, the less essential it is to replace it. From this point of view, few players in the Android world are beyond reproach. Samsung and Google offer between four and five years of monitoring and even Fairphone is not currently committed beyond 2025.

As you can see, it takes a lot of work to put a precise figure on the carbon footprint of a smartphone. But what the example of Fairphone clearly shows is that even if we are very careful about what we buy and how we treat our smartphone, there is still a lot of work to be done before we reach "sustainable" consumption. It should be remembered that in France, according to Arcep, "the individual duration of use of smartphones is estimated at between 23 months and 37". This is far from the seven years proposed by Fairphone, or the 10 years proposed by other industry players. So it's worth repeating: the greenest smartphone is the one you already have on you.

This article was written by Corentin Bechade

Sib64

I didn't take the time to rewrite this very interesting article because I didn't have the time, simply because the subject is very topical and raises questions.
When you see the number of models that smartphone manufacturers release, you can imagine the number of unused smartphones at the bottom of drawers, the number of smartphones that are thrown away but still usable, in short a phenomenal waste.
For example in France:
- 5% of French people throw away their old phone ;
- 20% give it to a relative ;
- 25% sell it
- 40% keep it in a drawer (between 54 and 113 million handsets)
- Only 10% recycle it.

I have not found for other countries, but I think it must be of the same order.
If you find results for your respective countries, feel free to post them here.
Thank you for the reading.

cristian

fairphone is a really interesting manufactour that try to approch with deifferent environmental and ethic issues, from carbon footprint to recycled materials, fair mineral mining, modular design and extended support. This make it worth absolutly the money but however we know that common customers see leverged price, not first impact wow (short lasting) design and not exaustive marketing behind, won't be attracted becouse of "look this have same soc and cost the half".

So without marketing behind the purpose to convice people to own holistic good piece of tech is… our, the communities that can read above the oversemplified data sheet, understand intrinsic value and persusde not enthusisat neighbors.

Another thing is that people haven't a lot of money to spend in phones, tipically 200 - 300€ so prefer own short lasting stuff and replace it 2 or 3 years later becouse obsolete or far less becouse broken screeen dosen't deserve the replacent, and being happy in the short term is enough.

So the big issue is the lack of environomental awerness (holism in the end). What would be really creative and original? Companies persuading people they don't need to repalce any more (for example) if get their fair and durable things.

But fair is not sexy.

Sib64

The problem is that our society has been accustomed since the so-called "Glorious Thirty" - from 1945 to 1975 - in France - to consume and for some decades has overconsumed. And this has become worse with the last generations and the advent of the Internet which has brought all the consumer products to our doorstep. You can do everything via the Internet. I don't want to condemn the Internet in any way, that's not my thinking, nor the subject.

But when we talk about over-consumption of products, smartphones are part of these electronic products that are manufactured and consumed in excess with little or no respect for the environment.

Whether it's in the design, the manufacturing, the recyclable materials are not part of the priorities because it has a cost.

The cost of manufacturing, then the break-even point and finally a selling price!

This is what Fairphone has understood by making smartphones with recycled products, with a limited carbon footprint. But Fairphone is not Samsung, a manufacturer that is very little known and as you write @cristian, does not have the same marketing like Samsung.

The equation is very simple if a brand wants to make smartphones or other electronic products with a reduced carbon footprint: maximum use of recycled products, an attractive price, an attractive product in a medium price range.

But people still need to understand that just because the product is not premium does not mean it is not functional, powerful, safe and fast. It's a another problem!

It's an equation with a number of unknowns that can be solved if everyone understands that the future of our planet is at stake, and that we have to stop the frantic race to "more than"!