Really fair? Yes and no.

Automated translation from German. Original Article

Cheap labour and rare earths: the Fairphone promises to be more socially and ecologically responsible than the models made by Apple or Samsung. A reality check.

When you buy a carton of free-range eggs, you do so in the hope of giving laying hens a life that treats them decently. But what your extra franc actually buys, in concrete animal-welfare terms, varies from label to label and is quite complicated: a Bio Suisse hen, for example, gets 0.1 square metres more coop floor than is legally required - about the size of a sheet of A4. On top of that, among other things, five square metres of outdoor space, more sand and organic feed.

You could also forgo eggs altogether — then you'd need fewer laying hens. But this is not a story about doing without; it is a story about consumption. And it isn't about eggs, either. It's about smartphones.

The fair phone

Or more precisely: the new Fairphone 4, which has just hit the shelves. How "fair" is this phone? And what exactly do you accomplish by buying it?

The shortest possible answer was given several years ago by Fairphone's founder, Bas van Abel. The Fairphones are not really fair phones, he said.

Rather, they are fairer phones.

The Fairphone was launched in 2010 as a campaign — with the aim of sensitising consumers to the environmental and social problems in smartphone manufacturing: raw materials from conflict zones, poor working conditions in factories such as that of Apple supplier Foxconn, where a dozen workers had thrown themselves to their deaths and, in the aftermath, "suicide nets" had been installed on the buildings.

In 2013, the campaign became a product: Fairphone brought its own smartphone to market. The second version appeared in 2015, the third in 2019. "In order to improve the industry, we have to become part of it", the company declared.

Now the Fairphone 4 is out. Along with it the renewed promise: that it places a lighter burden on the environment, is easy to repair, contains no conflict minerals, and guarantees fairer working conditions along the supply chain.

But how much fairer, exactly?

Let's look at it in detail.

The environmental balance sheet

Let's start with the environmental balance sheet. The decisive factor here is the manufacturing of smartphones: it consumes rare earths and is resource- and energy-intensive.

There are three levers available to improve the environmental balance:

• Material efficiency: minimise the quantity of materials used and maximise the share of recycled materials.
• Recovery: collect devices at the end of their useful life and recycle them.
• Longevity: build devices so that they can be used for a long time. Because the less often smartphones have to be replaced, the fewer have to be manufactured — and the smaller the environmental burden.

So how does the Fairphone fare in these areas? Is it better than, say, an iPhone?

The answer is: it's complicated.

On material efficiency, the Fairphone scores rather poorly. Fairphone designs its devices modularly, which makes repair by the user easier. As one of a very few smartphone brands, Fairphone wants to make it as easy as possible for you to fix your device yourself.

But the modular design also has its drawbacks: 17 per cent more precious metals are needed. Material efficiency is worse, because, among other things, more gold-plated connecting wires are needed between the modules.

With recycled materials there are major differences. Depending on the metal, recovery is either trivial or completely impossible. And the environmental impacts vary too. Recycled aluminium, for example, uses 95 per cent less energy than primary metal. Which is why Apple smartphones are made entirely from recycled aluminium. Fairphones are not.

Alongside this, a variety of certificates are in use. Fairphone relies, for example, on ASI-certified suppliers, and for gold it works with the Fairtrade label. Apple, meanwhile, sources gold from mines that are LBMA-certified. Typical of these certificates are that they involve a great deal of self-regulation and a great deal of public relations. The ASI certificate for instance, was created by the aluminium industry with the mission of ensuring "the maximisation of aluminium's contribution to a sustainable society". The requirements placed on participating firms, by contrast, are minimal: plenty of reporting, no hard targets. A company gets the certificate even if only one of its plants meets the requirements.

When it comes to recovery, every smartphone manufacturer has a problem. Because instead of returning their old device to the maker for recycling, consumers usually hoard it at home in a drawer until it eventually ends up in the rubbish. Only 12 to 15 per cent of all smartphones are recycled; the rest becomes electronic waste. Both Fairphone and Apple have free take-back programmes, but these are only sparingly used.

The most important environmental criterion, however, is longevity. Does a device slow down after a few years? Is the photo storage full? Does it crash more and more often? If so, it is often replaced with a new one.

The more reliably a smartphone functions, and the longer software support is guaranteed, the longer smartphones stay in use, says Marina Proske, researcher at the Fraunhofer Institute for Reliability and Microintegration. Phones with a swappable battery - like the Fairphone - aren't necessarily used longer: a battery change can indeed extend the lifespan. But instead of a new battery, users often simply buy a new phone anyway.

If Fairphone users really did repair their devices more readily, and so only replaced them every five years instead of every three, a great deal would be gained in term of sustainability. But how much longer, on average, does a Fairphone actually last? Unfortunately, nobody knows precisely. The company's Impact Report doesn't include any concrete information on the matter. Fairphone hopes to reach an average usage duration of 4.5 years by 2023. The target figure, however, is not verifiable even by the company itself.

According to a Fraunhofer Institute survey, the average lifespan of a smartphone is around 2.7 years. Most buyers do know that, ecologically speaking, it makes sense to use a phone for a long time. But that prevents very few of them from replacing their handset sooner than necessary.

Figures for individual manufacturers do not exist. Which is absurd: although it is probably the single most important sustainability metric, it is not stated in any environmental report — neither by Fairphone nor by Apple.

It is entirely plausible that Fairphone users repair their devices more often and use them for longer than owners of other phones. On software support, Fairphone is on a par with Apple. The six-year-old Fairphone 2 recently received a software update - but for many Android smartphones, support runs out after two or three years. The fact that Fairphone goes to the trouble of enabling repair by the user is also laudable. But in most cases, manufacturers run aground on the*culture of non-repair, as Melanie Jaeger-Erben puts it - Professor of the Sociology of Technology and the Environment at Brandenburg University of Technology in Cottbus. You can certainly try to talk consumers into repairing their phones. But it does no good if doing so costs time and money and is, in the end, simply impractical.

So to an interim verdict: the environmental balance sheet of device manufacturing is similar for most smartphones. The potential lies mainly in the length of use. Whether, then, you use a Fairphone for five years or use a different smartphone, makes no significant difference.

So much for the environment. Next, to the social balance sheet and the question: how much fairness are you actually buying with a Fairphone — and for whom?

The social balance sheet

The short answer: you are buying a bonus of on average 320 euros for around 500 people.

Together with its contract manufacturer Hi-P in Suzhou, China, Fairphone has been trialling a bonus system since 2020. Workers on the production line receive an additional 1.50 euros for each Fairphone produced. This is the amount Fairphone has identified as necessary to raise workers' wages to 5,000 yuan, roughly 650 euros - a wage "sufficient to live on", according to an employee survey. Most staff currently earn less. The statutory minimum wage is 2,020 yuan; a living wage is put by NGOs at 3,875 yuan.

This pilot project is a pioneering achievement and unique in the industry. For the roughly 500 beneficiaries, it makes a noticeable difference. Whether Hi-P's other clients - or the industry as a whole - will follow suit, however, is another matter.

Because not every client is like Fairphone.

Globally speaking, Fairphone sells smartphones in the high-price segment - where a 1.50-euro premium does not impact a vendors bottom line. Fairphone buyers are also not particularily price-sensitive: it matters rather little to them whether the smartphone costs 500 euros or 501.50. For a clear conscience, one is happy to pay more.

For many other smartphones, however, a difference of 1.50 euros is the difference between profit and bankruptcy. The manufacturer Xiaomi, for example, with an average device price of under 140 euros, makes an estimated 1.72 euros of profit per device sold.

On top of that, we are only talking here about final assembly. What would the arithmetic look like if all workers along the entire value chain received fair wages? Not just the assembly-line workers in Chinese Suzhou, but also the miners in the Democratic Republic of Congo, the workers in recycling plants, the hauliers and so on?

This is hard to estimate. But in order to pay fair wages to all these people, Fairphone would have to charge much more than a 1.50-euro premium.

Fairphone also says it carries out employee surveys at its suppliers and supports training on topics such as workers' rights, effective dialogue, health and safety. Beyond that, there is not much to be said about Fairphone's social balance sheet.

Is that fair, then? It's on you, the consumer, to decide.

And therein, perhaps, lies the main problem.

Depending on your angle, you can see the Fairphone as proof that consumer activism really does have an effect. Unfair working conditions and environmental problems reach the public, change many people's consumption needs, and with them the industry.

This view is not entirely unwarranted: topics such as manufacturing and materials sourcing were for a long time consigned by smartphone makers mainly to risk management - that is, to the department of the business meant to fend off lawsuits and bad publicity. Meanwhile, firms such as Apple have caught up and realised that social and ecological exemplariness can also be a selling point.

Trickle-down fairness, so to speak.

But by no means all companies are there yet. And in the meantime, the optionality indirectly legitimises the norm: unfair working conditions, cruelty to animals, surveillance, climate destruction. Professor Melanie Jaeger-Erben calls this the "commodification of sustainability": the conversion of sustainability into marketable and saleable strategies, rather than the transformation of the entire system towards sustainability.

As a conclusion one can say this: the Fairphone is a good smartphone, and Fairphone is a good company. But its very existence shows that self-evident environmental and social standards are optional. And that is a catastrophe.

Advertising is great …

If you have got this far, I wouldn't hold it against you if you find yourself slipping into what is known as analysis paralysis: helplessness and sheer overload. You want to know how sustainable a smartphone is, and instead you are served a piece that tries to boil down hundreds of pages of sustainability reporting. What you would most like is a simple recommendation. But unfortunately that is not possible, because the matter is complex.

On Fairphone's sales page, though, little of that nuance is to be felt. Fairphone advertises there with slogans like: *"No waste, no worries."* What exactly the sales pitch *electronic waste neutral* means, given a recycling rate currently at 18 per cent, remains unclear.

It becomes dangerous when companies like Fairphone give their customers the feeling that they can consume without a care. Because it is an illusion to believe that, as a consumer, you can buy your way into a better world.

And at the latest now, you realise that perhaps this isn't only about consumption. It is also about going without.

… regulation is better

The alternative to sustainability as a premium feature is the collective relinquishment of unsustainable options. Statutory minimum standards, a reduction of the offering, bans. Less consumer freedom, but also less being-overwhelmed, fewer worries. Responsibility for a just world would then no longer lie with you and your consumption decisions, but with the manufacturers. For now, that is wishful thinking.

Still, on the question of repairability, something is stirring. In France, since 2021, all phones have been fitted with a repairability index. The hope is to give visibility to repair and to throwaway culture, and to counter consumer overload. Austria takes a different tack: for the repair of certain products, a halved rate of VAT applies. The problem, then, has been recognised; the measures remain tame: a little financial nudging, a few colourful stickers on products. The hope that the consumer will reach for the product with the green tag. Binding environmental and social standards are nowhere in sight.

Because legislative initiatives of that kind usually provoke resistance in the affected industries. Consumer freedom is then wheeled out as an argument against structural improvements. And many people agree: why should all smartphones have to be fair? Whoever cares about fairness can just buy themselves a Fairphone. Easy.

Structural change, though, is not something you can buy in a shop. What you can buy in a shop are smartphones — and that, after all, is why you are here: because you want to know whether or not you should buy the new Fairphone.

So, in closing, the answers to the decisive questions.

• Are you doing something good when you buy a Fairphone? No, you are buying a smartphone.
• Does it deserve its name? Yes and no.
• Should you order it? If your six-year-old smartphone is almost falling apart, if you have been walking around for six months with a shattered screen that is no longer available as a spare part, the plastic is slowly discolouring, your photos have a yellow tint, people can barely understand you on the phone, your Wi-Fi is unstable and the last security update was 18 months ago? Absolutely, yes! If you want to use it to replace your three-year-old Fairphone 3 because the 5G upgrade tempts you: leave it.