Technology
Why “fair” smartphones should become the new standard
Smartphones have become an indispensable part of everyday life for many people around the world. They help us connect, relax and stay organised, and they give us access to information. Worldwide, over 1.6 billion of these complex, high-performance computers are sold every year. Their manufacture requires many specialised materials, such as gold for circuit boards, cobalt in batteries and neodymium in speaker magnets. It can be assumed that global sales correspond to an annual consumption of dozens of tonnes of gold and cobalt as well as hundreds of tonnes of neodymium.
This massive consumption of resources has serious environmental consequences. At the same time, hundreds of millions of mobile phones and smartphones are lying unused in drawers – an enormous, largely untapped source of raw materials. From the point of view of environmental and resource protection, this situation is no longer tolerable. That’s because every new smartphone consumes valuable raw materials, generates climate-damaging emissions and harms ecosystems all along global supply chains.
The greatest environmental and climate impacts of a smartphone – about 80 % of its CO₂ emissions – occur even before it is used for the first time. They are primarily attributable to raw-material extraction, production and the products’ complex global supply chains. The widespread assumption that buying a new device with a more efficient battery or display is more sustainable and therefore makes ecological sense is misguided. Due to smartphones’ large material-related carbon footprint, it is essential that the environmental impacts that have already been incurred continue to provide benefits for as long as possible. In other words: smartphones should be used for as long as they can be.
The extraction of the raw materials needed for smartphones is frequently associated with massive environmental degradation. Soil and water can be polluted by hazardous chemicals and heavy metals. In the worst-case scenario, entire ecosystems can be destroyed. In many regions of the world, resource mining is closely connected to social injustices and human-rights abuses, such as in cobalt mines in the Democratic Republic of the Congo.
Whoever looks at smartphones from an environmental and human-rights perspective will unequivocally conclude that we can’t keep doing “business as usual”. We can no longer tolerate the fact that new devices keep coming onto the market while functional old devices are being replaced far too early and often lie around unused. What is needed instead is a fundamental change – away from short-lived consumption toward durability, repairability, reuse and fairer supply chains.
Extending service lives
The most important lever is avoiding new production. The most sustainable smartphone is typically the one that doesn’t need to be manufactured in the first place. If a device breaks, repair should be the norm, not the exception. Buying used or professionally refurbished smartphones helps conserve resources and reduces the demand for new raw materials. Doing so extends the service life of existing devices – which is precisely what is needed from an ecological perspective. A 2018 study by the Fraunhofer Institute found that extending the service life from 2 to 4 years would conserve 14 kilogrammes of resources and 58 kilogrammes of climate-damaging emissions per smartphone.
If buying a new smartphone can’t be avoided, it should be chosen based on whether it fulfils so-called “eco-design” requirements. For example, it should be easy to repair and have long-term software update support. Since June 2025, the EU has required smartphones to carry an energy label that includes information on durability and repairability. It is also important that manufacturers disclose where their raw materials come from, the risks that occur in their supply chains, and how they are actively and verifiably preventing environmental destruction, exploitation and child labour. Fairness cannot simply be a marketing claim but instead has to be verifiable and traceable.
The Dutch firm Fairphone, considered a pioneer in the field of fairer smartphones, shows that such a path is possible. The company relies on a modular design that allows many components to be replaced using ordinary tools. For the latest generation of Fairphone, the company provides a five-year guarantee for registered devices as well as a comparatively long period of software support until 2033. As a result, the device has achieved the highest EU energy-label rating for repairability and durability. At the same time, the company is working to improve its supply chains, particularly for critical raw materials such as cobalt, gold, indium and lithium. For example, Fairphone is a member of the Fair Cobalt Alliance and has also established a supply chain for Fairtrade certified gold.
Structural changes are needed
While model companies like Fairphone are important, they cannot do enough on their own to change the market. For fairer and more resource-efficient smartphones as well as more ecologically responsible consumption to become the norm, political and structural changes are needed.
For example, manufacturers must be held more accountable for making repair and reuse easier for consumers. Stricter requirements for product design are therefore required. Smartphones should be made in such a way that they can be easily opened and repaired – without special tools, adhesive barriers or software restrictions. Manufacturers should also provide free access to repair manuals and software support for at least ten years. Equally important are more consumer-friendly regulations on the availability and pricing of spare parts.
Moreover, we urgently need to bring the many unused devices back into circulation. Every smartphone that is reused or professionally refurbished helps avoid new raw-material extraction. To take advantage of the potential of these “drawer phones” to protect resources and the environment, there are collection programmes in Germany such as “Handys für die Umwelt” (“mobile phones for the environment”) run by the civil-society organisation Deutsche Umwelthilfe e. V. (Environmental Action Germany). The collected devices are tested for reuse, and certain parts are used as spare parts. Only then are the devices or remaining components sent for recycling to recover the recyclable materials they contain.
Ultimately the issue of smartphones is about more than just a technological device. It requires us to consider whether our society wants to keep pursuing a linear economic model based on constant new product purchases, high resource consumption and social crises or whether the future consumption of smartphones should be designed in such a way that the ecological boundaries of our planet are respected and fair working conditions are created along global supply chains.
Viktor Schödwell is a Senior Expert in Circular Economy at Deutsche Umwelthilfe e. V.
schoedwell@duh.de
