How Do Phones Go Green?

Why can’t phones go even greener, by using renewable energy? It turns out that adding a solar panel to the phone doesn’t help at all, says Pellbäck-Scharp. “Ten square centimetres of silicon would really add to the energy use in manufacturing, and would have a low benefit.” Sony Ericsson tried a solar-powered phone prototype in 1999, but on balance it was not good for the environment. Most of the time phones are in pockets and wouldn’t get sunlight, so the panels couldn’t ever replace a charger.

Waste and recycling

Finally, what happens to phones when they die? Getting old phones out of landfill is an important issue, and Sony Ericsson aims to take back a million phones by the year 2015, with operators taking back even more. The companies are also working hard to get bad materials out of phones in the first place, says Pellbäck-Scharp.

As well as removing chemicals such as brominated flame retardants, manufacturers are looking at new materials in building phones. The C901 uses recycled plastic, and Sony Ericsson looked at using vegetable-plastics made from corn-starch, but “we didn’t want to compete with food,” said Pellbäck-Scharp.

But what about the take-back schemes? Many people are dubious about them – suspecting they are merely designed to remove old phones that might still be used (or sold on eBay) and force people to buy new ones. But manufacturers and operators defend them robustly.

“Eighty percent of the phones that come in are refurbished and sold,” said Gareth Rice, head of environment at O2. Many of these are sent to developing markets. Of the rest, many are broken up and their parts re-used, but all the waste is re-processed and none ends up in landfill or is shipped to the developing world, he said. At the moment, around three to ten percent of phones are collected in areas where the European WEEE directive holds.

Any idea that these recycling schemes are designed to reduce actual re-use would be dispelled by the numbers involved. Even with a million phones collected, that is still only about one percent of the phones sold in a year.

Overall, phones are green

In the end, it is possible that phones actually make a positive contribution to the earth’s environment. The lifecycle of a phone is about the same as a car driving 50 to 100 miles – and any phone call that reduces travel is a net benefit.