Today, our electronic tools have a deplorable social and environmental impact.
1.4 billion phones are sold per year. Their lifespan is approximately 2.7 years. Less than 20% is recycled.
This responsible and modular phone, will it be able to upset the industry?
Fairphone is an Amsterdam-based social enterprise dedicated to creating a movement for a fairer electronic world.
Manufacturing mobile phones explores the supply chain and builds new relationships between consumers and their products. They positively impact the entire mining, design, manufacturing and lifecycle value chain, while providing transparency and expanding the market for products that prioritize ethical values.
On the Fairphone site offers fairphone smartphones, accessories and spare parts. This telephone, designed to last, has also been designed to be repaired if necessary. Made of 40% recycled materials, fairphone also allows the purchase of spare parts if necessary. Allowing you to repair your phone easily instead of throwing it away and creating even more waste.
As soon as it is unpacked, the fairphone 3 is different. We find in the box: the smartphone, a mini screwdriver, a protective outline, a quick start guide and headphones. No charger or USB-C cable, because the manufacturer assumes that you probably already have one and that including it would create additional electronic waste. Incidentally, this allows the brand to offer a lower call price.
Fairphone has in particular targeted eight materials on which it is setting up fair trade channels: gold, cobalt, tungsten, lithium, neodymium, copper, plastic, tin. By 2022, its goal for the Fairphone 3 is to ensure that 40% of these eight materials come from responsible sources. This may seem modest, but it requires working closely with dozens of actors in the four corners of the world; it increases component prices; and it gives a hard time to dozens of employees at Fairphone. For its old model, the Dutch company had set more modest goals of four materials.
Fairphone is committed to guaranteeing parts availability for five years from today. This is a very ambitious goal, because in 2024 some of the components will no longer be manufactured. Its teams therefore carefully monitor the life cycle of the parts. They can build up a stock if necessary, or replace the component with a more modern part. The Fairphone 2's camera , for example, was upgraded from 8 to 12 megapixels a year after its release.
Fairphone is fully aware that not everything is perfect yet, but is always working to achieve more transparency on these issues. We have a lot of hope for this project, which we will follow very closely.
