Hidden Cost of
Cell Phones
Every year companies unveil a new phone model, prompting millions of users to upgrade. Phones are essential part of our lifestyle, it’s hard to avoid not having one that’s up to date. Newer technologies become a product of planned obsolescence.
A look in to cell phone production
Around 80 -90% of a smartphones total lifetime carbon emissions occur during manufacturing. The environmental cost attributed to your phone is before it reaches your hand.
The production of cell phones takes 146 million tons of carbon dioxide each year. The manufacturing process of cell phones accounts for those emissions mainly stemming from metal extraction. Metal extraction induces waste and can release dangerous metals to the atmosphere.
- On average it takes 62 different metals to build a smartphone, including rare-earth metals like yttrium and scandium, and other metals like cobalt and gold.
Metal mining has shown no signs of stopping with companies like Apple releasing new products every year that increase demand for phones that use these metals. Land use for this will continue to spill on to vulnerable environments. A study looking at 3,000 sites of extraction worldwide between 2000 and 2019, they found that 90 percent of these site locations suffered from water scarcity and polluted waters for nearby towns.
Hardships in making phones
From metal extraction to building the phone in factories, workers are exploited and put in high pressure situations and paid low wages, yet companies keep pushing new products yearly promoting unneeded consumption.
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There is an estimated 40,000 child laborers who mine in the Democratic Republic of Congo.
- Factories in China have workers slice and blast phone casing exposing themselves to 80-decibel sounds of machinery without protection of respirators or earplugs.
- Processing left over e-waste materials is often done through burning causing pollutants like lead and tin, polluting the surrounding environment.
