In 1954, industrial designer Brooks Stevens came up with the catchphrase “planned obsolescence” as a description of the industrial designer’s mission for his talk at a local advertising club in Minneapolis. A major facet of design theory, Steven’s came up with the notion of planned obsolescence which encourages incremental design updates annually in order to promote the continued consumption of consumer objects. We see this ideology firmly invigorated today in smartphone design where every major company is coming up with updates once—if not thrice—a year.
This is planned obsolescence in action, but what are the greater ramifications of new technology on the environment? And how does a strategy dating back to the mid 20th century impact our cultural norms of the use and abuse of technology today?
Aside from design obsolescence, there are technological factors of obsolescence such as critical leaps in battery performance, changing durability (ie. waterproofing), deteriorating appearance, and the factor of repairability (or non-repairability) all of which contributes to how smartphones are bought or upgraded. While there are consumer lists suggesting which mobile phones are the most ecological, these are widely debatable given the human cost of mobile phone technology and given the cobalt contained in every single lithium-ion rechargeable battery on the planet. Of course this battery is not limited to the smartphone, but the turnover of smartphones position these products as the number one ecological and human disaster for new tech today.
Today, approximately 60% of cobalt mining is taking place in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) where mines are controlled by armed groups and violent militias which have, according to Laura Dodd, only proliferated since the Dodd-Frank Act (2010) which requires mining companies of tin, tungsten, coltan and gold to perform due diligence to mitigate risks associated from mining in and around the DRC. Add to this the fact that journalists like Siddharth Kara, recently in the field are finding a plethora of children as young as six in these mines. Certainly, this region’s history from Belgium’s King Leopold II brutal rule over the rubber trade, the DRC is no stranger to human right abuses. There is much documentation of the negative social impacts of this mining that extend far beyond child slavery and civil wars.
Well known are the ecological impacts to mining, but cobalt mining brings up certain dangers that many are unaware of beginning with the destruction of plant communities which depend upon soils naturally enriched with copper and cobalt in the DRC. Aside from this there are the commonly known issues with the dust which contains many metals to include cobalt and uranium. Researchers collected blood and urine samples from 72 Kasulo (DRC) residents which included 32 children and examined in relation to a group with a similar composition from a neighboring district. The results demonstrated that children living in the mining district had ten times as much cobalt in addition to other far more dangerous minerals in their urine as children living elsewhere, far higher than the acceptable limits set under EU regulations.
Aside from cobalt, smartphone and electric automobile batteries require other precious minerals such as lithium. Turn to three years ago in Tagong, a town on the eastern edge of the Tibetan plateau, where protestors threw thousands of fish onto the streets in protest of the chemical leak from the Ganzizhou Rongda Lithium mine. This was one of three such incidents since 2009. The tragic irony in this, of course, is that it is electric batteries set to replace fossil fuels which are to be the future of ecological recovery; yet we are seeing a new wave of ecological disaster linked to the mining of minerals integral to lithium-ion batteries.
And if the above isn’t depressing enough, the damage caused by nickel mining is no better where mining communities, such a that in Cerro Matoso mine in Colombia, are reporting high rates of birth deformities and respiratory problems associated with nickel mining and smelting.
What is clear is that we need an alternative to lithium-ion batteries, and until such a replacement is found, we really must be frugal in how we use new technology and when and how we purchase it. For instance, it makes no sense that people toss their mobiles in the trash when they break or fall into the pool. These are not ecologically viable ways of recycling mobile phone technology which can largely be cannibalized. There are many ways to deal with old and even broken mobile phones. Apple allows you to give back your old phone in order to trade it in for a newer model with a price upgrade, of course. Then there are various companies where you can sell your iPhone and then turn around and purchase another. In this way, older mobile phones can be recycled or resold, put to continued use by another.
As e-waste recycling is now becoming a serious business, it is also struggling to keep up with the vast supply as electronic waste predicted to reach 45 million tonnes in 2017. As the need to create more computer recycling programs mounts, we must keep in mind that much of this e-waste is environmentally toxic and would best be recycled rather than left to in landfills where a third of e-waste still ends up.
Ultimately, the first step in ecological conservation with smartphones has to be the interrogation of the self: do you really need this new device? In fact, before you plan to buy a new mobile, read up on the human cost of this technology and then see if you really new that better pixel quality or higher resolution of photos. We need to stop being part of the problem when it comes to ecological and human rights destruction and start using new technology wisely, if not frugally.
