Earth calling all mobiles...

This report by Forum for the Future is from 2006, but I doubt much has changed in two years, in terms of the environmental costs of mobile devices.

“The scope of the paper is the whole mobile phone sector, including networks, offices and retail. The first section of the paper provides an introduction and overview; the second section looks at the four processes most responsible for the sector's environmental impact (extracting raw materials used in phones and networks, manufacturing phone components, running networks, and managing equipment at end-of-life); the third section reviews a number of other important processes; and finally, in the fourth section, we look at what the future might hold.”

There is not a lot of cheery news in this report, but they try to end on a positive note:

“Using mobile phones may reduce an individual’s personal environmental impact, for example through transport substitution or effective energy management, but the research to support this idea is currently lacking. There is significant opportunity to further understand the potentially positive impacts associated with the behavioural impacts of mobile use through a detailed research programme. In addition, there are opportunities for the mobile industry to develop products and services that support and encourage better environmental behaviour.”

Cell Phone Recycling



(be sure to read the comments on this video at YouTube)

Recycling is a start, but clearly not the entire solution. The following is from an MSNBC article posted in January, 2008.

“But charity watchdogs caution that there are potential downsides: Most of the money ends up in the hands of middlemen who resell the devices. And these for-profit companies — including EcoPhones, Phoneraiser, FundingFactory, CollectiveGood, Think Recycle, ReCellular, Cellular Funds and Project KOPEG (Keep Our Planet Earth Green) — are rapidly proliferating, perhaps at the expense of similar nonprofits.

What’s more, U.S. “recycling” programs may end up exporting hazardous waste problems to developing nations ill equipped to deal with them, they say.”

Cell Phone Recycling Links

The EPA has an informational site for cell phone recycling.

Apple and others have teamed with “Rethink”

Google on “cell phone recycling”

First Mobile Misuse?

Another quote from Constant Touch points toward SMS as being the first major misuse of the mobile phone:

Text messaging was an accident. No one expected it. When the first text message was sent, in 1993 by new Nokia engineering student Riku Pihkonen, the telecommunications companies thought it was not important. SMS – Short Message Service – was not considered a major part of GSM. Like most technologies, the power of text – indeed the power of the phone – was discovered by users. In the case of text messaging, the users were the young are poor in the West and East.

Excuse me, Your Pocket Watch is Ringing..

In Constant Touch: a global history of the mobile phone, Jon Agar makes the case for the similarities between the development of the pocket watch and fixed international time zones with the development of cell phones and the ability to roam.

While it might have felt like liberation from tradition, the owner was caught anew in a more modern rationality, for, despite the fact that the pocket watch gave the owner personal access to exact time, accuracy depended on being-part of a system. If the owner was unwilling personally to make regular astronomical observations, the pocket watch would still have to be reset every ‘now‘ and then from the town clock.

In this quote he points out that taking on this new device (the watch) brought with it duties, responsibilities, and tasks that you didn’t have before. One of the aspects of technology that really interests me is the lack of awareness of repercussions we have when we take on these devices. I have met many people in my lifetime (both before and after the cell phone) that consciously chose not to wear a wrist watch because of the demands it put on their psyche. The conscious denial of time, unloading the burden of knowing the exact time, casting off the shackles of the clock - it all signified to me that the person was a free thinker, a non-conformist, someone who refused to take on all the orderly requirements of a schedule. Now you really don’t need to wear a wrist watch because the cell phone has become our new pocket watch. Will we be told by our non-conformist friends, that they don’t carry a cell phone because of the pressure it puts on their freedom?