“Shocking Truth Revealed: Can the Tech Industry Really Go Green?”

By Jessica Rawnsley, Financial Times

Over the past decade, technology has become an indispensable companion in our lives. An increasing number of devices respond to our every daily need. But all of these, from smart watches and wireless headphones to virtual assistants and tablets, have shelf lives. And, once discarded, they linger in e-waste graveyards, releasing toxins into the ground or collecting dust in drawers. All the resources extracted, transported and processed in their manufacture – rare minerals, plastics, chemicals – are lost. And all the energy used to create them is lost to the hotter and hotter atmosphere.

In 2020, a United Nations Global E-waste Monitor relationship found that a whopping 53.6 million tonnes of e-waste was dumped worldwide in 2019. That’s the same weight as 4,500 Eiffel towers. Or heavier than the combined weight of all commercial aircraft ever made. And that’s just a year of e-waste. Inside that horde of washing machines, televisions and toasters was an estimated $57 billion in raw materials, more than the GDP of many nations. Only 17.4% of these materials have been recycled. Most have been incinerated or landfilled.

Demand has not peaked. Some 1.43 billion phones are sold every year. Ecommerce sales continue to grow worldwide. As a result, e-waste is one of the fastest growing waste streams in the world. The United Nations predicts that, based on current trends, the annual generation of e-waste will skyrocket 74.7 million tonnes by 2030. The report called for a global restart and a new vision for e-waste rooted in the “circular economy” of reuse and recycling. But is a sustainable electronics industry possible?

^{Broken smartphones, credit Smith Collection/Gado/Getty Images}

A number of fledgling companies and tech giants have been grappling with this question. Organizations have sprung up to coordinate their efforts.

The Circular Electronics Partnership (CEP) was established in 2021 to bring together experts, business leaders and global organizations to co-engineer solutions for a ‘circular’ electronics industry. Together with 40 companies, CEP has produced a roadmap that identifies the main sustainability barriers faced by the sector and the paths towards circularity.

“These 40 barriers are something all companies encounter and because they are all so broad, they need collective action to overcome,” says Carolien Van Brunschot, manager at CEP. “You don’t build a circular economy yourself. It’s a bigger system, so you need to collaborate with industry peers.”

While recycling is often cited as the answer to e-waste, the change needs to start much earlier in the value chain. Referring to the 17% of e-waste that gets recycled, Brunschot asks: “What does recycled mean? Does that mean it enters the new electronics? Does it mean that all materials are really separate at their molecular level? The part on reused and refurbished is missing… [Low recycling rates] they are not a recycling problem but a problem of the entire value chain”.

The starting point – and the first CEP path – is to build circularity into product design. “Essentially, you want to keep things around and in use for as long as possible,” says Brunschot.

This idea forms the backbone of Fairphone, a Dutch smartphone manufacturer and social enterprise focused on fair and recycled materials. “If you want to address environmental impact, longevity becomes the area of ​​focus because most of a smartphone’s impact lies in its manufacturing stage,” explains Thea Kleinmagd, innovator of circular material chains at Fairphone. According to some estimates, 75% of a phone’s negative environmental footprint lies in its manufacturing.

The company’s latest model, the Fairphone 4, is modular: made up of eight modules that are easily serviced by customers, with guides and spare parts available on the website. “The repair has a very small carbon footprint,” says Kleinmagd. “If you design intelligently, in a way [means] you can trade modules that have a very low impact and keep the big module, the core, alive, so you’re gaining a lot of resources because you can use it longer and it doesn’t end up in recycling where you lose a lot of the materials.”

^{Fairphone 4, credit Fairphone}

But, at the moment, says Kleinmagd, the repair “is not a given” as “it is very expensive and often makes it quite difficult for users to obtain replacement parts”.

In recent years there has been a campaign on consumers’ right to repair electronic devices, rather than being forced to throw them away. Governments are starting to take notice. Last year, the EU consolidated this right into legislation. States in America are following suit. Apple, Samsung, and others have begun offering repair guides and kits for some of their products.

It also requires a change in consumer behavior; the so-called “culture of updating” is incompatible with a circular economy. “It’s something consumers have to deal with as well,” says Brunschot. “It’s really a global society mentality to use things for as long as possible. And, if you can’t anymore, take it apart and see what else you could use it for. It’s about valuing what you have rather than what you can buy.”

Tech companies, including Apple and Dell, have implemented schemes to incentivize customers to turn in old devices with the reward of store credit. Samsung’s “Upcycling at Home” allows people to repurpose old Galaxy smartphones into devices like baby monitors.

^{Daisy robot, credit Apple}

Initiatives such as Smartphones4Good are giving away second and third home devices. “Storage a used smartphone in the drawer?” his website asks. “Now you can save our planet’s precious resources and breathe new life into your phone by sending it to us. We erase all remaining data from the phone, after which an entrepreneur in Africa will be given the option to rent it at an affordable price.”

And innovations in recycling are improving what can be recovered from expired technology. Apple’s Daisy robot can disassemble 200 phones an hour. Similarly, her robot Dave retrieves rare earth, tungsten and steel magnets, while her machine Taz retrieves magnets from sound modules. In 2021, 20 percent of all materials in Apple products were recycled; the goal is 100 percent.

^{Daisy robot, credit Apple}

The International Telecommunication Union (ITU) of the United Nations guides the national policies of governments regarding electronic waste. These may include recycling benchmarks or current efforts to standardize global power adapters. “Compliance and enforcement are key,” says Cosmas Zavazava, director of ITU’s Telecommunications Development Office. “It’s a work in progress. We have to educate, educate, educate”.

Some early signs are promising. Since 2014, the number of countries that have adopted a national e-waste policy, legislation or regulation has increased from 61 to 78, and that number is still growing, according to a report from the ITU. In 2021, the global e-waste recycling market was already worth $3.6 billion and is now projected to expand at a compound annual growth rate of 7.6% to reach $7.3 billion by 2030 , based on data from Transparency Market Research.

“It won’t be a night shift,” says Brunschot. “We are not going to wake up one day and say, oh, the circular economy is here. It’s a gradual change. But it’s happening.