Learn how much the smartphone industry harms the environment. The facts will surprise you.
With so much to learn, see, and improve, the smartphone industry is evolving rapidly and introducing “must-have” features to a variety of new devices. However, even though smartphones are becoming more and more technologically advanced, they surprisingly don’t last very long. In fact, many users feel like their old phones lasted much longer.
This happens because today's manufacturers are very good at planning for the obsolescence of new devices. Think about it, how could they sell so many phones if the devices had a long lifespan and worked perfectly? So, after a certain period of time, the smartphone starts to show several defects. Keep reading and understand how this affects the environment.
Big loss
If many cell phones are produced every year, all of them affect the planet. This is because they require raw materials from various sources in nature and the manufacturing process has a relatively significant footprint (ecological or environmental, water and carbon).
Among the various resources extracted from the environment for the production of smartphones, minerals such as lithium, tantalum and cobalt and rare metals such as platinum stand out, increasing the global footprint by 18 m² of land and 12,760 liters of water. In addition, it produces 16 kg of carbon emissions.
According to the Basic Sanitation Company of the State of São Paulo (Sabesp), an economical electric shower uses about 15 liters of water. Therefore, a human being can be “washed” 850 times with the same amount of water used to produce a smartphone.
Mining and contamination
Another factor that affects the environment is the rare earth elements used in the manufacture of magnets, batteries, LED lamps, speakers, printed circuit boards and glossy glass screens. The global market for these elements is dominated by China, which has a significant environmental impact when mined. Mining waste includes arsenic, barium, cadmium, lead, fluorine and sulphate. One tonne of ore generates 75,000 litres of acid effluent, in addition to large quantities of gaseous effluent and less than a tonne of radioactive waste.
Tin is another major environmental destructor found in smartphones. According to Friends of the Earth, the Indonesian island of Bangka, which provides a third of the world’s tin reserves, is suffering from this mining. In addition to practices that cause serious impacts on the local environment, destroying coastal forests, contaminating drinking water, degrading soils, damaging coral reefs and affecting fish populations.
Furthermore, manual tin extraction can lead to high mortality rates and horrific injuries for the workers involved.
Trucost, a company that calculates the hidden costs of unsustainable resource use, has obtained data on smartphone footprints. Packaging accounts for over 50% of a smartphone’s environmental impact. Commodities such as adhesives and plastics, excluding extraction and packaging, account for over 39% of the footprint. The manufacturing and assembly of smartphone components is responsible for the largest water footprint of the entire process, accounting for approximately 40% of the total water used in the process, of which almost 95% is heavy water, used to dilute contaminants.
So, think carefully before you change your smartphone just on a whim, or because a more recent one came out, this can seriously harm the planet.
