How does Fairphone's new handset adhere to circular economy principles?

The leading brand of sustainable smartphones called Fairphone launched its latest handset, the Fairphone 5 today, and it claims to be the company’s ‘most sustainable’. IEMA's Digital Journalist Tom Pashby reports.

Fairphone was launched in 2013 following campaigning by a group of individuals who wanted to raise awareness about the conflict minerals that continue to be used in consumer electronics.

The company has since launched five smartphones, plus a ‘plus’ version of the Fairphone 3, along with headphones and earbuds.

One of the key unique selling points of Fairphone is its capacity to be repaired down to individual components due to its modular design.

Whereas other smartphones may need a large chunk to be replaced professionally by a third-party shop or the phone brand itself, individual Fairphone users can purchase parts and complete repairs themselves.

It is this major step towards circular economics that makes the product stand out to environmentally conscious people.

Miquel Ballester, co-founder and head of product management at Fairphone, said: “Designing for sustainability always comes with trade-offs and yet despite these, we’ve made our best smartphone yet. We designed a thinner device, without compromising on repairability and durability.

“We continue to be unique in working with our suppliers to pay a living wage bonus to the people who make our phones and in an industry first, we have now started supporting living wages for the people who make some of our phone components.

“The Fairphone 5 is a smartphone that is transformative, bringing the mobile industry to new heights of sustainability and workers welfare.”

The complexity of designing, making, selling, repairing, and further selling refurbished phones means there are multiple avenues to challenge claims of sustainability.

Sustainability to some might mean purely focusing on net zero. For a smartphone, holistic sustainability must include fair wages and decent conditions for workers, elimination of conflict or otherwise illicitly obtained materials in the production process, decarbonisation of manufacturing and transport, repairability of the product, and financial sustainability for the company.

IEMA launched its Circular Economy 101 guide in July 2023, written by a group of experts convened by the professional membership body. The guide advocated for the implementation of six key principles for circular economy practitioners.

The six principles are ‘use less’, ‘use longer’, ‘use it more’, ‘use it again’, ‘make clean and sustainable’, and ‘fair, just and inclusive’.

Catherine Weetman, an IEMA Fellow and co-author of the Circular Economy 101 guidance, reflected on the ways she felt Fairphone 5 was adhering to the six principles.

She said: “Fairphone is constantly looking for new ways to become more circular. A good example of this is Fairphone’s commitment to a longer than normal period of software support.” She also said she had been using her previous phone – the Fairphone 2 – for seven years, with the help of modular replacements for components such as the microphone.

Fairphone said in a statement that it is “challenging the industry status quo by offering eight years of software support and security updates from the launch of an Android device. This is more than twice the standard support time other Android providers currently offer.”

Of the six principles, Fairphone will likely find it most difficult to abide by ‘use it more’. Catherine said: “Maybe phones are never going to tick that box, because everybody wants their own smartphone and wants it 24/7.”

However, regarding whether Fairphone achieves the six principles more broadly, she said “I think they go further because of the ‘fair’ aspect of it, which is really sort of what they're focusing on.

“I like the way they're always trying to raise the bar on every part of the sustainability aspects of their business and particularly around the social value as well.”

She went on to raise concerns about increased pressure on materials, such as lithium and rare earth elements, which are increasingly being used and increasingly ending up in landfills or incinerators, such as the batteries in disposable vapes.

Fairphone said: “More than 70% of the 14 focus materials used in the device are either from recycled or fair mined sources or support responsible production with unique Fairphone and partners’ impact projects. This includes fair tungsten, fair lithium (IRMA audited), and Fairtrade gold integrated into the supply chain. It contains recycled materials such as aluminium from suppliers audited against the Aluminium Stewardship Initiative (ASI), tin, rare earth elements, nickel, zinc, copper, magnesium, indium, and plastics (the back cover is made of 100% recycled plastic).”

Further information about the Fairphone 5 is available here.