Eco friendly phone by Nokia

Eco friendly phone by Nokia

Nowadays, most of people use mobile phones. It is not only a calling device anymore, it is becoming smarter, more convenient, and a powerful tool that everybody needs in their daily life. As phone industry grow, more people start using phones, and many of them start to change their phones more frequently. According to Gartner, in Q3 of 2013, 456 million phones were sold and 55% of them were smartphones. And that is just for a quarter alone! This proves how phone industry is rising during recent years, and it does not seem like this increasing trend will stop anytime soon.

However along with the growth of phone industry, another problem grows as well: the environmental problem. As report shows, most of the phones are made of chemical that are bad for environment. What is worse is that on average, each phone contains 4.5 pounds of toxic material, including copper, beryllium, lithium, lead, mercury… and other types. In addition to that, most cell phones consumed are harder disassemble and are not recycled properly. Through time, this can cause enormous effects on environment including climate change and global warming. Moreover, as more people use mobile phones, more energy is consumed, and that leads to potential environmental problems as well.

Cell phone producers realized that they can make a change, become more responsible by fixing the environmental issue of cell phones. And that is when the concept of eco-friendly phone, a phone that is environmentally friendly, came up. As a one of the biggest cell phone producer of all times, Nokia was one of the very first corporations to embrace and develop this concept.

 

 

Sustainability, and being socially responsible have always been the core of Nokia’s business. Nokia really put efforts on the trying to make a “green” phone, and below are some strategies that they used:

• Changes in material: An average phone contains 4,5 pounds of toxic and other bad chemicals, so the 1^st thing to think about when you are trying to make a green phone is to solve this issue. In many cell phones, Nokia replaced those chemicals with other material that can be recycled or better for environment like bio plastic, recycled plastic or recycled metal. For example, its Nokia 700 doesn’t contains substances like PVC, brominated flame retardants or other brominated compounds.
• Making better charges: many people has a bad a habit, that is leaving phone on charge even if it is fully charged, which can lead to energy waste. Over the last decade, Nokia made phones with charges that bleep after the phone is fully charged, and this helped reducing no – load power consumption of charges by over 80%, saving a huge amount of energy.
• Screens: Nokia, and many other producers, is trying to improve screen technology so it can become brighter and as energy efficient as possible. Nokia was also one of the 1^st corporations to add a light sensor to their screen, so the screen can adjust the brightness based on the light condition, which of course saves a lot of energy as well.
• Packaging: Packing products with 100% recyclable material become the priority for many corporations all over the world, including Nokia. Moreover, companies also try to reduce the material required for packing their products. By 2005 and 2010, Nokia have reduced the paper consumption by 240.000 tons just by changing the way they pack the product.
• Recycling old phones: along with making phones with mostly recyclable material, Nokia also had many programs that encourage people to recycle their old phones. One of them giving a discount by a point system if you give your old Nokia phone for a recycling.

 

By strongly following the strategies above, Nokia produced many phones that were in the list of most eco-friendly phones in the world.

Maybe Nokia’s effort were not known by most people, but silently, it really made a big difference. Nowadays, more and more companies are following this trend, and mobile phones are becoming friendlier to the environment. Next time you buy a new phone, be wise and choose a phone that is eco – friendly, so you can support the responsible producer and make this world a better place yourself.