As a retired electronics engineer, I marvel at the latest gadgets and I even bought a new digital camera a few months ago. But I also like keeping old gadgets going. Should I get a new mobile? – a common dilemma. A smartphone would provide some features I’d use, but this old Sony, held together with a rubber band, still provides me with the essentials. Replacing its battery was simple compared to an iphone, which would have to be returned to Apple for a £55 battery replacement.
I’m suspicious that the poor design of smartphones for repair and upgrade is deliberate to trap users into frequently replacing them. Clever marketing of must-have gadgets, peer pressure and our thirst for information also drive the current boom in electronics, now a significant part of most people’s carbon footprints. Apple are one of the few companies to publish footprint information for their main products. They claim footprints of around 0.5 Tonne CO2 for notebooks and 1.5 Tonne for desktops. Compare this to UK average footprint of 12 Tonnes per person per year – or is yours already lower? For every Apple product (except displays and servers) the embodied CO2 from its manufacture dominates the combined emissions of transport, recycling and electricity use over its typical lifetime. HP come top in Greenpeace’s Guide to Greener Electronics, but annoyingly they don’t publish footprint information for their products.
Working conditions at Foxconn, Apple’s main manufacturer, are a big concern after suicides and rooftop protests by its workers. As the world’s biggest company with $50B/yr profit, Apple really ought to have the best conditions for its subcontract workers. After pressure, they’re making some improvements with pay rises to £180-£250 per month and independent inspections by the Fair Labor Association . The truth is that most of our stuff is cheap because of exploitation of workers and the environment in distant places and this will cost us dearly.