Here’s the good news: Some of you mobile players are among the most progressive corporations around when it comes to being gentle to Mother Earth.
The bad news? Well, yeah, there’s plenty of that on the green front, too.
Infrastructure vendors have made impressive strides in recent years when it comes to lessening their environmental impact. Nokia Corp., for one, has reduced the amount of energy used in its base stations by roughly two-thirds since 2001, according to a report from Frost & Sullivan. Companies such as L.M. Ericsson and Nokia Siemens Networks are deploying wind- and solar-powered base stations in remote locations in Africa and India, where just getting fuel to a site can be an expensive headache. Huwaei is using new technology in an effort to cut power consumption in base stations by 50% and reduce emissions. Even smaller players like Berliner Communications Inc. have launched green initiatives to offer alternatives to traditional network power and back-up power equipment.
Some of Ericsson’s base stations are powered by biofuel in places like Nigeria and India.
Photo credit: Ericsson
And those kinds of efforts will be ramped up in the next few years as Next Generation Networks (NGNs) come online. The new networks not only will reduce greenhouse- gas emissions by 40%, according to Frost & Sullivan, they will provide opportunities to improve existing networks during the coming transitions.
“I think a lot of service providers are still operating on legacy systems,” said Sharifah Amirah, principal analyst of telecoms for Frost & Sullivan, during an online conference several weeks ago. “The NGN transformations are expected to be complete in Europe, at least, by the end of 2010, 2011, so in that interim and during that migration, if there are solutions that will be able to improve the efficiency of existing solutions, we’ll see a demand for that.”
Handset manufacturers are cleaning up their acts, too, eschewing toxic chemicals in favor of less potent materials. Nokia recently unveiled the 3110 Evolve, a handset composed of renewable material and packaged in 60% recycled content, and the company has showcased a phone — aptly dubbed the Remade — made of aluminum cans, plastic bottles and car tires. LG Electronics Co. Ltd. has joined the bandwagon, vowing to use only environmentally friendly stuff in all its new products, and Samsung Electronics Ltd. is set to launch models that use materials such as bioplastic in favor of heavy metals and PVC.
Perhaps as importantly, those leading the charge are actively lobbying for stricter regulations for manufacturers, said Casey Harrell, a toxics campaigner for Greenpeace International.
Marketing advantage
“Interestingly enough, there’s a split in the industry where companies will see a market advantage, because they’ve phased out toxic chemicals faster (than their competitors), then they support stronger guidelines,” Harrell said, citing Nokia’s work with European authorities. “I think terms of what progress to expect in five years, on the chemical side, there will be no player in the global market with products that have PVC or brominated flame retardants. … Mobile-phone companies have some of the best corporate policies across the board on a lot of issues, especially in terms of take-back, because they can afford to. It’s not as expensive (to recycle), and it’s a benefit to them because they can recycle a lot of the materials in their phones.”
Nokia Siemens Networks’ Flexi base station uses up to 60% less power than the previous generation of equipment.
Photo credit: Nokia Siemens Networks
And for the overwhelming number of toxic-ridden handsets already on the market, recycling programs may be slowly gaining traction. Carriers use such offerings as a way to position themselves as environmentally conscientious, and manufacturers have developed ways to reuse expensive material more cheaply than new stuff. Best Buy has seen its electronics recyclables nearly double in the past two years, with consumers dropping off an estimated 9,400 tons of hardware in 2008, despite limited marketing support for the program.
“We’re probably looking at doing a little more marketing; but just making the program available for people has been the biggest part” of its success, said Paula Prahl, Best Buy’s senior VP of communications for public affairs and corporate responsibility. “We’re just looking for ways to bring the total amount of product we can bring back in.”
50M tons of waste per year
The lack of consumer awareness may prove disastrous as wireless moves into developing markets such as China and India. Enviro-friendly handsets will come to market during the next few years, but the vast majority of phones used around the world — and many of those in retail stores today — contain all sorts of nasty substances, from PVC to heavy metals such as mercury, lead and cadmium.
And while there’s no way to tell just how much of that stuff is finding its way into landfills and other dangerous places, the figures are daunting: as much as 50 million tons of hazardous waste is being generated every year, according to the United Nations Environment Program, and roughly 80% of the U.S.’s share is unaccounted for.
Mobile is especially complicit when it comes to generating unnecessary waste, Harrell opined, thanks to a lack of universal standards that require users to buy new chargers and other accessories nearly every time they upgrade phones. Much of the waste is making its way to developing nations, Harrell said, where it’s either buried or improperly destroyed.
“We haven’t yet seen a deceleration of the amount of e-waste going into those hidden flows,” he explained. “Oftentimes, there’s open burning to get scrap metal. It’s crazy, because this stuff is filled with toxic chemicals.”
So as the industry is making great strides in going green — with more efficient networks and less-harmful handsets — much of the focus over the next few years will be on cleaning up the existing mess. Recycling programs must be expanded, according to Harrell, focusing not just on consumer education but on emerging markets overseas. Oh, and while it’s highly unlikely to happen, it would be nice both for users and for the planet if the industry could settle on just a few standards for the accoutrements that typically accompany all those phones.
“I think in the next five years one of the big challenges for the OEMs is to establish global take-back programs,” Harrell said. “It’s hard to tell — we’re taking a bite of the apple, but is our apple growing at a larger rate than the bite being taken out of it?”
