Could Fairphone help clean up supply chains in the smartphone market?

A new ethical smartphone raises questions whether they can ever be truly conflict-free but it will certainly shake up the market

Guardian Professional, Rich McEachran,  19 September 2013

Founded at the beginning of 2013, Fairphone is aiming to disrupt the status
quo of the smartphone market. Photograph: Fairphone

This article is being typed on a Samsung laptop and the interviews have been conducted via an Apple product. In the past, boycotting the electronic giants has been seen as ineffective as there hasn't been a conflict-free alternative to turn to in protest. Now there is.

Founded at the beginning of the year, Fairphone is aiming to disrupt the status quo of the smartphone market. Costing €325 (around £275 or $440) it's reasonably priced, and given the recent announcement of the iPhone 5S & 5C, its launch is timely.

It started in 2010 as a campaign to create awareness of abuses in electronics supply chains. The Dutch social enterprise soon realised that creating a conflict-free smartphone was a tangible goal. Using existing initiatives such as Conflict-Free Tin Initiative and Solutions for Hope, it has managed to ensure sources of tin and tantalum are conflict-free and it's trying to be as transparent as possible throughout the supply chain, from the mines to the factories to the end user. It has even released a cost breakdown of where every pound is spent. Part of each sale goes towards Closing the Loop, a global programme that encourages the reuse and recycling of old mobile phones.

Fairphone has received 15,000 pre-orders with 25,000 handsets available, and this week the company will showcase the product at its UK launch at the London Design Festival.

Fairphone openly admits that its product isn't "100% ethical", but is proud of the fact that it is putting people and social values first. It seems consumers understand this, too. A Twitter search brings up plenty of tweets from people who have bought a handset. The majority of Twitter users approached indicated that they were buying into the movement, supporting the cause and helping create public awareness.

Natalie Foo, co-owner of an e-consultancy firm whose clients have included an iron ore mining company, told me that she was inspired to buy one after meeting Fairphone's product strategist last year, when the phone was still in its incubation stage.

"By examining the supply chain and manufacturing processes in detail, they can encourage people to be more conscious about their purchases and educate them on what actually goes on," explains Foo.

One user who preferred to remain anonymous, said that "splitting hairs over whether a product can ever be totally free of conflict is creating a false dichotomy" and that people should just "buy into the feel good factor of Fairphone helping clean up supply chains".

Another anonymous user, who works in software development, said they would avoid buying it because instead of being run on a free software, it is run on the Android operating-system, a software market dominated by Samsung, which makes 95% of Android phone sales.

The complexity of the relationships in the electronics industry – for instance, Apple has been known to use parts produced by Samsung – does beg the question of whether a phone can ever be free from conflict or avoid being connected to a company that is failing to clean up its act.

Those who had bought the Fairphone seemed to have done so partly out of a feeling of guilt. Buying the phone was seen as a way to absolve themselves from indirectly supporting and funding the illegal mining and war in the Democratic Republic of Congo.

"While owning a phone does not make a person responsible for these violations, it does link us to the atrocities, and given the intimacy and constancy of these objects in our lives, the connection is ever-present and thereby disturbing" says Daniel Rothenberg, a lecturer at Arizona State University who presented a paper in July titled Is your cell phone linked to atrocities in Africa?.

At the same time, those asked admitted that if Apple, Nokia or Samsung were to release their own conflict-free phones they would consider buying one.

"A shift like that in the industry, from [one of the big three companies], will be a game-changer," explains Bandi Mbubi, the founder of Congo Calling. "And it is no longer too far off. The ground has been prepared [by Fairphone]. The movement has brought the end-users closer, at least psychologically, to the producers of raw materials. It has raised unprecedented awareness in the minds of consumers."

There is still reason to be cautious, though. If the electronic giants produce their own conflict-free smartphone, then arguably Fairphone has set out to achieve what it wanted and that is to put consumer pressure on companies to clean up their supply chains. However, if companies start making claims of being fairer and more ethical without having the evidence to validate them, then consumers are likely to sniff them out.

Due to the nature of supply chains, and as companies don't buy directly from mines but from smelters, there is always the risk that illegal minerals could be smuggled in. This convoluted manufacturing system has given companies an excuse to pardon themselves from any wrongdoing.

The hope though is that with the Dodd-Frank legislation coming into effect next year, companies will no longer have excuses and can legitimately claim that their supply chains are 100% conflict-free by the end of 2014. Sasha Lezhnev, a senior policy analyst at the Enough Project, a humanitarian organisation dedicated to ending genocide and crimes against humanity, believes that this is a realistic aim and that a key step towards achieving this is the audit of smelters. As it stands, only a quarter of smelters have gone through conflict-free audits.

"Over the next year, as companies implement the legislation, this number should go up significantly, to the point that electronics companies can weed out the uncertified smelters from their supply chains" says Lezhnev.

"Another key step is to make sure those companies also help build a clean minerals trade in Congo by buying from certified mines, because if they don't, the smuggled minerals will come back to bite them in a dirty supply chain."

Until then, Fairphone is a welcome development in highlighting the issues of ethical conduct of the smartphone market.

This content is brought to you by Guardian Professional. Become GSB member to get more stories like this direct to your inbox

Related Article:

Phonebloks: a phone that can be built like Lego