Sustainable technology must be prioritised over enhancement: Re-focusing a wasteful tech culture

By Jo Barnard, Founder of Morrama

The UN recently reported that as a global population we are throwing away £50bn worth of electrical waste every year, and with no sign of slowing up anytime soon. Alongside our collective environmental concerns of climate change, pollution, deforestation and biodiversity, our waste of electrical goods – or e-waste as it is becoming better known – is right up there as a real cause for concern.

As a society, we have found ourselves locked in a repetitive cycle of technology and device ownership. Televisions, tablets, and mobile phones – arguably the largest cause of technological waste – are consistently replaced and removed from our lives with little thought for where the remains of products go. Mobile devices specifically are a guilty party here. Round and round we go, disposing of our phones and replacing them with a new and equally expensive model – with the fate of our old devices often unknown. Until now it has been hard to imagine a world where we know any different. However, there are ways in which we can impact positive change onto our technology habits and move away from this wasteful tech culture. Is the latest iPhone really more important than the future of the planet?

One way to do this is by designing wasteful resources and materials out of the products themselves from the very first design stage. Waste by-products and pollution are a big issue for the technology industry and one of the key approaches for a more sustainable future is how to resolve and overcome this. The problem, though, is that the materials typically used in devices are currently high complexity and with few alternative options for such semi-precious materials.

How could we, for example, transform our traditional consumer technology products and business models into something that complements a sustainable vision for the future? We should consider how mobile phones could be made upgradeable rather than replaced using innovative design solutions. By creating a three-part design model for a phone, consisting of: A back; internal systems; and the screen; we could create a system where each element of the phone becomes individually upgradable and isn’t reliant on the device as a whole. You could seek to upgrade your operating system when there is a new update available, while improved cameras could be swapped in with a different case colour or design, and screen replacements available with ease. Combining this with entirely sustainable and eco-friendly materials could provide a new outlook for the modern consumer and mobile network – one in which we do not find ourselves stuck in a repetitive and often overly costly contractual agreement.

And what about Water? Approximately 2,000 gallons of ultrapure water is currently being used per 100 chips or semiconductors. This means we are wasting freshwater, which obviously could be put to much better use across the struggling societies of our world, and so instead we should look at reducing this amount and even recycling the water to avoid such unnecessary wastage of pure resources. Intel, which had previously reported it was using almost three billion gallons of water per year to create its products, are one company to have spearheaded such a necessary adjustment. Its $237million investment into water conservation projects since 1998 have moved the company back into a more positive light. They aim to return 100 percent of its water to communities for local use by 2025 – so it’s not beyond the realms of possibility to make this a standard across all technology sectors. It is broader business initiatives such as these that also work to improve brand reputation and recognition among customers, promoting these businesses as genuine leaders within sustainable innovation.

One, very avoidable, area where we could easily cut back on waste lies in the launch phase of a product. So often we hear of faulty devices being recalled by companies due to flaws in their system design – the mass recalling of the Samsung Note 10 comes to mind – which ultimately leads to a colossal waste of resources as a result of the devices being returned. Also, there is the unnecessary pollution caused by transporting useless products back to suppliers. More attention therefore needs to be paid to carrying out proper testing before products are – often carelessly – sent out into the world only for 100,000s of these devices to be rendered totally useless and obsolete.

It is important, however, to consider more than just the contribution of modern, handheld and shorter lifespan devices to e-waste. Smaller technology such as phones and tablets actually only account for 9% of the world’s total e-waste, with home technology such as irons, kettles and toasters (37%); fridges and freezers (22%); and televisions (14%) making up the larger portion of electrical waste. Their longer lifespan naturally makes them less harmful and damaging to the environment proportionally to the likes of computerised technology, but there is still a case to be made for how design can provide solutions to make our existing utilities upgradable rather than replaceable, similarly to smaller devices.

That being said, it is important to consider the contributions technological waste makes towards damaging the planet as a collective, not just focus on the smaller scale. It is an issue not previously held as high in importance as the more common issues for our environment, but is one that should not be underestimated. Promoting sustainable design, production and removal of our devices and large-scale technology and appliances is something that should be prioritised ahead of any new technological enhancement. Controlling our wasteful tech consumption must come first.