What are electronics companies doing to be more sustainable?

Our phones, tablets, computers and smart speakers have become embedded features of everyday life. According to Statista, the average person globally now owns 3.6 electronic devices – feeding into a consumer market that’s worth a reported $1trillion/year.

 

It’s no secret that our appetite for these gadgets has a significant environmental and social impact. From the mining activity for rare earth minerals and the growing piles of electronic waste littering the planet, to the huge volume of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions created in producing and supporting these devices, the electronics industry is currently among one of the most unsustainable in the world (learn more about the impacts of electronics here).

 

According to research from VTT, electronics consumption is expected to double by 2050, creating an increasingly urgent sustainability challenge for the whole industry. Here’s what the biggest companies are doing to mitigate the crisis.

Commitments to lower carbon

With the industry accounting for 4% of global greenhouse gas emissions, electronics companies have a major role to play in addressing global warming – the key driver of climate change. Brands have made some big promises in this area. Amazon and Intel, for example, have committed to a net zero carbon footprint by 2040, while Google has pledged the same by 2030.

 

Microsoft, meanwhile, has taken its plans one step further and claims it will be carbon negative by 2030, and says that by 2050 it will have offset all the carbon dioxide (CO2) produced since the company’s creation in 1975. Part of its strategy here is the use of an ‘internal carbon fee’. In place since 2012, the fee comes out of its groups’ operating budgets, encouraging them to make more sustainable business decisions. 

Investing in renewable energy

One key way companies are reducing their carbon footprints is through renewable energy. In 2020, Amazon became the first consumer electronics company to commit to offset the energy used by its devices in customers’ homes, which it’s doing by building wind and solar farms around the world. By the end of 2021, the company was matching the energy consumption of 100% of its Echo devices.

 

Apple, meanwhile, set a goal in 2020 to generate renewable energy for 90% of its facilities, while Samsung has already achieved its aim of renewably generating 100% of the energy used at its sites in the US, Europe and China. Elsewhere, Google is a major corporate purchaser of renewable energy, and has signed more than 55 power purchase agreements, which will provide nearly 6 gigawatts (GW) of renewable energy that is new to the grid.

Using recycled materials

Every year the electronics industry generates more than 50 million tonnes of electronic waste (or ‘e-waste’). According to the international Waste Electrical and Electronic Forum, some 5.3bn mobile phones were thrown away in 2022 alone. This represents a huge waste of both materials and the resources required to manufacture electronic devices in the first place, as well as contributing to the mounting waste problem. The vast majority of discarded devices end up in landfill, creating major health and safety risks to both people and planet.

 

The Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment Directive (WEEE Directive) is an EU Directive designed to manage e-waste more sustainably, and which aims to recycle or recover 85% of electronic waste. However, despite its inception in 2003, current estimates suggest just 40% of e-waste is appropriately handled. As such, the onus is on electronics companies to build circular economy principles into their operations from the outset (learn more about the circular economy here).

 

Samsung, for example, has created a dedicated Circular Economy Lab to innovate new technologies that maximise resource circularity, while Google has already achieved its ambition of using recycled materials in all of its consumer electronics products. Apple, meanwhile, has introduced certified recycled gold, and in 2021 59% of all the aluminium used in its shipped products came from recycled sources. The company has developed a number of robots to help with its recycling efforts, including ‘Daisy’, which can disassemble 200 iPhones an hour, ‘Dave’, which recovers rare earth magnets, tungsten and steel, and ‘Taz’, which reclaims magnets from audio modules.

 

However, these tech giants have the influence and resources to invest in these initiatives. For smaller companies, switching up established operations is more of a challenge. Gaming electronics company Razer, for example, has set a more conservative goal of using recycled or recyclable materials in all of its products by 2030, noting that it depends on the active involvement of materials suppliers and contract manufacturers to build greener products. Not every electronics company has the sway of Google or Apple.

 

Additionally, building electronic devices with recycled content is not a matter of simply switching out existing materials. There are multiple trade-offs in terms of quality, durability and performance which need to be taken into account, and creating lower quality tech could result in a shorter lifespan for a product, which is clearly at odds with efforts to improve sustainability (read more about product durability and lifespans here).  

Minimising packaging 

Excess and unnecessary plastic packaging is an issue for all industries, and the electronics sector is no exception. Google says it plans to make its product packaging 100% plastic-free and recyclable by 2025, while Apple has a similar goal, and since 2021 plastics have accounted for just 4% of its packaging total. Meanwhile, Lenovo has introduced plastics alternatives such as sugar cane and bamboo to its packaging materials, while Dell has been experimenting with mushroom-based materials.

Changing designs

By changing the building blocks of their products, electronics companies can design out waste and resource demand from the outset. Fairphone is a prime example of this, with a modular phone design that extends the lifespan of the device by 2.7 years, reducing GHG emissions by 30% per year of use across the phone’s whole life cycle.

 

Dell, for example, is working on a prototype laptop, Concept Luna, with accessible components and fewer materials. The laptop contains just 30 screws, for example, instead of the industry average 300. Google now designs its Nest Thermostat with 36% fewer parts for a less complicated and resource-hungry design, while over the last decade Apple has reduced the average energy demand of its products by 70%. Samsung, meanwhile, is aiming to lower the power consumption of its products by a further 30% by 2030, compared to 2019 specifications.

 

Some companies are also exploring ways to redesign the very infrastructure that supports our devices. Japan-based Fujitsu, for example, has developed a virtual radio access network (vRAN) that optimises the resources needed for 5G use, reducing associated CO2 emissions by 50%.

Greener chemicals

Electronics are manufactured with a long list of substances known to be toxic. They all serve important purposes, but there’s a sustainability trade-off, with many of these chemicals showing links to diseases such as cancer. This is a problem across the value chain, from the health of workers assembling these devices, to impacts on natural environments when they’re discarded.

 

As is the case with recycled materials, finding safer chemical replacements isn’t straightforward, as they have to be able to perform the same function just as well as their more toxic counterparts. However, a number of initiatives and partnerships exist to help electronics companies do exactly that. GreenScreen for Safer Chemicals, for example, helps companies identify hotspots in their supply chains where changes could be made – HP used this platform to eliminate PVC from its cables, for example.

 

Similarly, the International Campaign for Responsible Technology helped Seagate engage with their suppliers to disclose all of their chemicals, giving them a better picture of the substances in their products. And, more recently, Apple and NGO ChemFORWARD have partnered up to launch ChemWorks, an online platform providing free access to a registry of safer cleaners and degreasers used in electronics.

Saving water

Water consumption is not something many people typically associate with electronics, but the industry uses huge volumes of this precious resource. Making a single smartphone uses up to 13 tonnes of water, with 30 litres of that needed to make a single chip alone. In 2019, Tawain Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC) used a staggering 63 million tonnes of water in producing chips and wafers.

 

Unlike other industries, such as fashion and beverages, the electronics industry has been slow to move the needle on this issue, although a number of companies have made efforts in this area. HP reduced its freshwater consumption by 11% between 2019 and 2020, while Dell saved 43.4 million cubic meters across 2020 – 45% more than it saved the previous year.

 

Samsung, meanwhile, has committed to keeping its water consumption to 2021 levels despite the company’s operations being expected to double by 2030, while Intel says it’s aiming towards net positive water usage, and returned or restored 90% of the freshwater it used in 2020. Intel was one of the first electronics companies to sign the CEO Water Mandate, designed to advance corporate water stewardship around the world.

 

As well as such initiatives, many companies are looking to tech innovation to reduce their water consumption. STMicroelectronics, for example, recycled and reused 45% of the total water it withdrew in 2015, while others are looking at switching up manufacturing processes to address the issue. According to a report by IDTechEx, using special additive methods in print circuit board manufacturing could lower production process water consumption by 95%.

Addressing conflict minerals

Conflict minerals remain a significant challenge for electronics companies. These minerals – which include the metals tantalum, tin, tungsten and gold – are vital components of our gadgets and gizmos, but are often linked to armed-conflicts and related human rights abuses in developing nations where they’re mined.

 

In 2010, the US passed the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Action, which included a provision requiring companies to report annually on the due diligence measures they have undertaken to assess the use of conflict minerals in their supply chain. Companies took swift action as a result – driven especially by increasing consumer interest in the sustainability of big brands and labels – and today most major electronics company have a conflict minerals policy in place.

 

However, even the tightest supply chains have gaps where regulation (particularly in politically and socially tumultuous regions) is difficult to regulate, and evidence published by Global Witness in 2022 suggests that companies (including Apple and Samsung) may rely on a supply chain due diligence scheme that is actually used to launder conflict minerals from the DRC. In one mining area, for example, the investigation found that up to 90% of minerals did not come from mines validated for meeting security and human rights standards.

 

Some companies have found ways to mitigate this risk, however. When Fairphone was unable to sufficiently trace the supply chain of gold used in their phones beyond the Shanghai Gold Exchange, the company simply paid for an equivalent quantity of gold from certified Fairtrade refiners and allowed this to then be traded on the Exchange instead.

Are electronics companies doing enough?

The electronics industry – like all sectors – faces a raft of unique challenges in addressing sustainability. However, given their prominence in consumers’ lives – and the often immense financial and marketing resources at their disposal – they have a valuable role to play in driving the global transition to more sustainable practices.

 

As evidenced, the key electronics companies are taking action. But is it enough? In 2017, Greenpeace released a report exploring this question, ultimately concluding that companies need to ramp up their efforts if they’re to meaningfully mitigate their social and environmental impacts. Chief among the report’s suggestions – and of particular relevance five years later – were recommendations to:

• improve supply chain transparency;
• strengthen commitments to tackling e-waste; and
• rethink design to give products longer useful lifespans.

Circular economy advocates suggest completely reconsidering the way we use electronic devices, claiming that new models of ownership could significantly mitigate a lot of the environmental impacts associated with our phones, tablets and laptops. ‘Electronics as a service’ – where consumers pay for access to devices rather than owning them – is being explored by a number of companies, for example. Fairphone has launched its ‘Fairphone as a Service’ initiative, while Dell in the US already has a ‘PC as a Service’ offering (learn more about new models of ownership here).

 

Making such fundamental changes to a well-established consumer landscape comes with challenges of its own. However, as the sustainability narrative grows more urgent, and consumers are increasingly prepared to vote with their wallets, major electronics companies will have to ramp up their efforts if they’re to remain relevant to consumers and investors. The companies that don’t will, much like the plethora of devices on the market today, become obsolete as their audiences go elsewhere.  

Further reading Sustainability reports from Apple, Amazon, Dell, Fairphone, Google, Intel, Lenovo, Razer and Samsung Statista’s figures on device ownership VTT’s research on sustainable electronics Microsoft’s internal carbon fee Statista figures on e-waste The BBC’s report on WEEE Forum findings on phone disposal ProSUM’s report on how much WEEE is actually recycled Yale’s report on health risks and electronics GreenScreen for Safer Chemicals ChemFORWARD The International Campaign for Responsible Technology Blue and Green Tomorrow’s report on water consumption in electronics production Sustainalytics’ investigation into water consumption by semiconductor companies The CEO Water Mandate IDTechex’s report on Sustainable Electronics Manufacturing More on the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act Global Witnesses investigation into conflict minerals in supply chains Fairphone’s conflict-free gold ‘workaround’ Greenpeace’s 2017 report on green electronics The World Economic Forum’s ‘Circular Vision for Electronics’ report

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