I work for a tech company and although we work very hard to minimise the impact we have on the world, we have to work within a deeply dysfunctional industry. The insatiable demand for new devices - and phones are the worst - has created an obscenely complex and heartless supply chain and ever-more complex products with ever-shortening lifespans.
Environmental and social concerns were left for dead by the industry years ago and we have all be complicit in ignoring the terrible impact our ambivalence and greed is having on our planet. It doesn't matter if you're Apple, Android, Blackberry or Windows, they are all guilty of sucking up ultra-precious resources at a terrifying rate (from some barbarous places) and none are seriously trying limit their avaricious rampage. And why should they? No one is seriously asking them to. So it's very obviously time for a change.
It will take a monumental amount of effort, courage and investment to break this cycle, but I am super-excited by the Dutch Fairphone project. It's one of those things that everyone who claims to be environmentally minded should support - and buy - immediately. It's expensive when you can get a free handset with a contract, and the first ones probably won't be as good as an iPhone5, but it will have a pure soul, rich with righteous purpose. And so will you.
The website is full of great stuff, and the following is lifted directly from there.
'The entire global supply chain is too complex and overwhelming to be addressed as whole. Which is why we’re starting with a single product. One, single, open, high-performance smartphone made as fairly possible with a transparent supply chain. One step at a time.
Our smartphone is a practical starting point for telling the story of how our economy functions. Producing a phone lets us tackle the big questions and challenges we face from a human perspective. It’s an everyday object that nearly everyone owns, uses or can identify with. It’s both a tangible device and a great symbol of our connected, social world.
But the phone is not a solution in and of itself – it’s simply a vehicle for change. We’re revealing its story, understanding how it’s made and producing an alternative. By buying this phone, you’re reconfirming that collective action counts and becoming part of a community that has the power to fuel change.
Us & You
At the end of the day, the real story isn’t about the economy, the phone or the community. It’s all about you.
You are the privileged, informed individual that has the ability to be part of the solution. You might not think that one action matters, but together our actions can truly make a difference. With a few small steps, you just might change our story’s ending.
Fairphone is more than a phone. It’s a beginning.
Fairphone started in 2010 as an awareness project about conflict minerals in electronics and the wars that the sourcing of these minerals is fuelling in the DR Congo. Fairphone is an intiative by Bas van Abel (then Creative Director at Waag society – an institute that develops creative technology for social innovation) and ran for 3 years before Bas van Abel realised that if he really wanted to uncover the story behind the sourcing, production, distribution and recycling, he needed to make the phone. Bas van Abel’s drive comes from his desire to open up things and reconnect people to the things they own. His motto, taken from the maker’s movement is ‘if you can’t open it, you don’t own it”.
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