Cellphones and sustainability
Cellphones are nearly universal items these days, owned by 90% of people in developed countries. Cellphones help to keep us connected in a growing world, however, there is a dark side to this common gadget. Electronics are one of the largest waste streams in the world, with over 130 million cellphones going to landfill each year in the US alone. One reason is the built-in obsolescence that drives consumers to replace their phones after only a couple years, even in developing countries.
While this high turnover in tech has grown the world economy by 5 times since the 1950s, it has degraded the environment significantly. Cellphones contain highly hazardous metals, as well as materials like arsenic and lead, which are considered bio-accumulative toxins that can lead to cancer and serious developmental problems. When cellphones are trashed, these materials leach from landfills, threatening the surrounding environment.
In addition to environmental concerns, cellphone waste causes social harm. While the majority of electronic waste is produced in the Global North, most of it is sent to the Global South, where poorer regions are used as “dumping grounds”. This e-waste can have serious health consequences for the people who process it, including brain damage, birth defects, and stunted development. The mining of raw resources to replace those lost in discarded phones can also be socially and environmentally harmful, such as in the Democratic Republic of Congo, where the extraction of “conflict minerals” fuels civil unrest and has enabled paramilitary groups to abuse and enslave mine workers.
There is a dominant myth in modern society that nature is an unlimited resource. This myth has normalized the overexploitation of our resources, and has been the case since the 19th century when there emerged a pervasive narrative that the earth’s resources were free for man to take. An example of this can be seen today in the mining of coltan, a metallic ore used in cellphone capacitors. Due to the environmental degradation caused by the coltan mines in the Democratic Republic of Congo that supply much of this material, mining operations have caused steep declines in the numbers of elephants and gorillas in the region. The fact that these species have been pushed to the brink of extinction demonstrates that the idea of nature as limitless and ours for the taking has enabled our capitalistic society to push the limits of technological and economic growth at the expense of the natural world.
Another paradigm underlying the issue of excess cellphone production is the idea that economy, environment, and society are separate. With the focus on the economic growth resulting from cellphone production, society remains detached from the reality that someone else pays a price for that growth, namely the environment and vulnerable workers in developing nations. This perception of disconnect is typical of capitalism, which fathered the notion that nature should bend “to the demands of work, growth, and competition”.
One initiative implemented to alleviate the problem of overproduction of cellphones is recycling. Cellphone recycling has taken off in many major countries including the USA, Canada, and the UK. Since consumers often replace cellphones due to the appeal of new models and tech improvements, most phones entering the waste stream still have working parts and thus can be recycled. Recycling could - atleast theoretically - solve the issue of e-waste going to landfill, as well as the environmental and social issues caused by extraction of raw materials, since fewer would be needed.
It is estimated that over 90% of the materials in a cellphone can be recovered and recycled, so in addition to environmental benefits, reusing these materials is also worthwhile economically, resulting in resource and energy savings. It’s estimated that the energy that is required to recover metals from a ton of e-waste waste is less than half of what it takes to extract new materials, meaning recycling doesn’t require an economic trade-off. Given that recovering old phones to recycle them could benefit both the environment and the economy, at first glance it seems like a sustainable solution to the problem of cellphone waste.
Yet despite the apparent benefits of recycling cellphones, the question is whether this is a truly sustainable solution to the problem. From an environmental perspective, it may be a better option than sending cellphones to landfill, however, the process of recycling can be damaging in and of itself.
While cellphones aren’t thought to be dangerous for the environment if disposed of correctly, given that most e-waste recycling takes place in developing countries that don’t have necessary safety measures in place, cellphone processing can be risky. For example, soil and trees contaminated with heavy concentrations of lead, dioxins, and furans have been found near e-waste recycling facilities in China. Such toxins can lead to serious health problems for humans and wildlife in the area. These environmental issues are intertwined with the social issues of cellphone recycling.
One social issue is that poorer regions of the world are being given the responsibility of recycling e-waste produced by richer regions. For example, there isn’t a large market in the US for reprocessed cellphones, so the vast majority are resold to developing countries to be reused or recycled, resulting in profits for the US as it passes its burden on to someone else. Up to 80% of that e-waste ends up on the black market in countries such as China, exposing workers to harmful toxins and questionable labour conditions.
Given its failure to adequately address the social imperative, the solution of recycling cellphones represents what is known as “first-generation” sustainability thinking. There is an understanding that the environment and economy need integration, but little attention is given to social considerations or equity. In order to be truly sustainable, the solution to cellphone waste would have to address both natural and human systems, and recognize the complex ways they are in interconnected.
Unfortunately, because those most negatively affected by this issue are the working classes of poor regions, this issue hasn’t found its way to the priority list of policy makers. In addition to the standards of health and safety needing improvement, the illegal trade of phones for recycling needs to be made globally unprofitable, though this will require major changes to current systems.
Ultimately, relying on the 3 R’s (reducing, reusing, recycling) is an end-of-pipe solution that doesn’t transform the system itself. Furthermore, while it’s an attempt to address the environmental imperative, cellphone recycling initiatives don’t address social issues arising from class, race, gender, and poverty inequity. They also fail to engage diverse stakeholders, and aren’t supported by effective policy. There simply isn’t enough integration between the three imperatives of environment, economy, and society in this solution to consider it truly sustainable.
While cellphones are likely here to stay, the dominant paradigms that underlie their use and production don’t have to. Going forward, it is crucial for innovators to be aware of these myths, and to challenge the status quo by shifting the paradigm to one that adequately acknowledges the interconnected relationships between human and natural systems.
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