We’ve just announced another investment round of $510 million, raising Back Market’s valuation to $5.7 billion. It’s a big deal, especially coming just 8 months after our last fundraising. We don’t want to pretend otherwise.

But we also don’t want to lose focus from the most interesting numbers we have: the 6 million customers who have decided to buy tech differently and the 650 Back Makers that are working hard to make buying renewed electronics simpler, easier, and safer for everyone. These numbers are more important because they tell a bigger story than the money can. These numbers tell us that change isn’t just possible, it’s already happening.

90% of a device’s carbon footprint comes from the manufacturing process. And after a couple of years, a lot of devices are discarded. In fact, so many devices are discarded each year that the world’s recycling infrastructure can’t handle it — which is why electronic waste is the most toxic and fastest-growing solid-waste stream.

Yes, even faster than fast fashion.

How is it possible that we toss out electronics at an even faster rate than t-shirts? (Which, by the way, we are already discarding way too fast). This information is discouraging. Why don’t people understand that our hardware matters?

But, what I’ve come to realize recently is that people are beginning to understand and to care. Some of you — millions of you — care enough to change your behavior and to try something that’s renewed. And some of you care enough to get in the trenches with us, working to bolster the circular economy for tech.

So, thank you. I’m grateful for all of you and for all that you represent: a fighting chance in a world that is still dominated by New, and a hope that maybe tomorrow it won’t be.

You know how there are people who win the lottery and then all their friends and family from before say “Oh, the money really changed them”? Well, that’s going to be Back Market. Money changes everything, and $335 million is a big chunk of change.

Of course, we have very specific ideas on how Back Market is going to change, and so do our investors. For our Series D funding, we’ve welcomed two new funds into the fold: General Atlantic, well-known for investing in companies that challenge and transform industries, and Generation Investment Management, founded by Al Gore and his partners with a focus on long-term impact investing and sustainability.

We are celebrating of course, but if I sound less than jubilant, it’s also because there’s no time to lose. Transformation, if it’s to be intentional, is necessarily a lot of work. And we don’t just intend to transform Back Market, we intend to transform the consumer electronics industry as a whole. Suddenly, $335 million doesn’t sound like too much.

Back Market’s ‘why’

Back Market was built on the hope of changing the consumer electronics industry and on making tech more sustainable. It’s an oversimplification, but basically as things stand, the electronics industry digs up a lot of natural resources (producing a lot of emissions along the way) to manufacture new devices every year only to have much of it dumped in the ground again after a few years of use. Worldwide, only 17.4% of our discarded electronics are properly recycled which is why we are actually in the middle of a growing electronics waste crisis, with electronics waste up 21% in just 5 years.

With almost 5 million customers worldwide Back Market is catalyzing a fundamental shift in consumer behavior and driving the conversation around how people consume technology. We have managed to position our company as the world’s flag-bearer for refurbished electronics. Now we are left with the daunting task of bringing refurbished electronics to the same class as new electronics and making it the first choice for customers buying devices and appliances.

Our ambition and dogged determination to see this project through is what has attracted investors that value our mission and vision, and who believe that we will succeed.

How now, brown cow?

To bring things back full circle, the only way to succeed is to change. A lot.

How do we do that? First, by having a laser-focus on quality. We can’t compete with New if we aren’t in the same league — we’re talking about device standards, customer service, the whole shebang. As a marketplace, we are only as good as our sellers, which is why the cash we raised will be used to invest heavily in services that support and improve our sellers’ operations…and of course, their bottom lines, making it easy and worthwhile for them to raise the bar for refurbished electronics.

We also need to fight to become more global. As we approach the half-way mark of 2021, Back Market has launched in Japan, Finland, Portugal and Ireland, bringing our operations to 13 markets. We will soon open our doors in Canada, Greece, Sweden and Slovakia. The new device market is a $1.5 trillion market, and it’s going to take a lot of scaling to be able to make a dent in that market share.

There is one thing that we don’t plan to change though, and that’s our mission. As a startup scales there’s always the threat of becoming so consumed by growth that the forest is missed for the trees. We plan to dig our heels in when it comes to sustainability, fighting e-waste and planned obsolescence while also doing what we can to make our own operations as sustainable as possible.

Ambition doesn’t have to be a bad thing. Money changing everything doesn’t have to be a bad thing. And we’re grateful for another crazy ride around the sun, on this joyful pirate ship we call Back Market.

Wanna ride our boat? Join us.

In 2015, Amazon decided to celebrate 20 years in its role as co-conspirator to the American people in their “little shopping habit” by — very appropriately — creating Amazon Prime Day, a summer event meant to induce a shopping frenzy and encourage people to subscribe to Prime membership. It’s working: analysts predict that the percentage of American households that subscribe to the service will rise to 50.3% this year. Other brands like eBay, Target, and Walmart are now also trying to capitalize on Prime day, a big win for consumers if the media is to be believed.

But are consumers really winning with an event that is now being referred to as “Summer’s Black Friday”? I get it, not everyone is or wants to be a minimalist, no matter how popular Marie Kondo’s show happens to be. Yet, the fact remains that our thoughtless consumption comes with a pretty hefty price tag — and it’s almost a guarantee that Amazon (and all these other brands) won’t cough up a dime once the check arrives.

Apart from the fact that overconsumption makes us unhappier in general, the social and environmental impact of producing and consuming more than we need is extremely high. Cheap labor, poor working conditions, environmentally harmful manufacturing practices — these are all par for the course when producing and selling a lot of things fast and cheap. We’re not even talking outside the US in the case of Amazon, whose warehouse workers plan to have a strike on Prime Day.

Is it worth it? Some people would say yes because these issues, as big as they are, feel remote compared to the many other struggles they face day to day. When you’ve had a bad day, and you cheer yourself up by getting a new pair of sunglasses for next to nothing, you don’t want to think about who made them, where they came from, and how they got to you.

This freedom is precious, except that, in the case of overproduction and overconsumption, it’s hard to say people are making their choices freely when companies with a lot of money are working actively to influence these choices. When companies make it their business to convince people that they need more when they really don’t, that’s egregious. And this is exactly what I find so disturbing about Prime Day.

Black Friday at its origin was at least rooted in something that made sense: the start of the holiday season, marking the time when people normally began to seek gifts to offer friends and family for the end of the year. Prime Day, on the other hand, is a blatant push by one of the most influential companies in the world to change consumer behavior for the worse, and for no reason other than their bottom line.

And so we at Back Market would like to offer our own humble alternative to consumers, and introduce “Still In Its Prime Day”. Many of the objects we love the most — individually, and as a nation, aren’t new. The Statue of Liberty is still in its prime. The glazed donut is still in its prime. The ratty old jeans that you wear daily are still in their prime.

For Still In Its Prime Day, before you decide (or let a company decide) that you want something new, we ask you to celebrate what you already have instead. We think you’ll be happily surprised.

Share something from your life that’s #StillInItsPrime on social media (and tag some friends to do it, obviously); maybe it’ll be a drop in the bucket compared to all the buzz around Amazon and their big day, but everything counts. Waste not, want not — and that includes our freedom.

Rebranding Back Market: Scaling Without Selling Out

Vianney Vaute / CCO, Back Market

It’s been over 4 years since Back Market made its first sale, in France, where our story began. That was a time when Thibaud, Quentin and I imagined ourselves to be a little bit like revolutionaries, the three of us trying to reimagine electronics and e-commerce in our small corner of Paris.

Our vision then was clear and simple: to create a true alternative to buying new electronics — and with the same stroke, to be part of the solution to the toxic electronic waste problem resulting from the breakneck pace of production and overconsumption that is encouraged by the electronics industry.

Thanks to a lot of hard work and a little luck, we’ve succeeded in bringing together hundreds of refurbished electronics sellers and have convinced almost 1.5 million customers to start taking refurbished products home. But paradoxically, our success brought with it a kind of uneasiness: would our big revolutionary idea end with big bucks and no soul?

Screw New.

While we were excited to raise the $48 million that would allow us to expand and bring our business to the US, intuitively we understood that this opportunity also carried with it a lot of risk. The greatest risk, to our minds, was that we would lose sight of why we started the enterprise in the first place.

Now, more than ever, we need to hold fast to our vision and the principles that we started with. To be clear, we aren’t here to eradicate New — there must always be room for innovation — but we do want to put New in its right place. That’s a tall order and the first thing we realized is that we can’t start a revolution without keeping it real. So to sum it up, we’ve condensed our vision and the spirit of our enterprise in two words:

The exercise of rebranding is our way of sounding the bugle long and strong in view of the long march and the struggles ahead. It is our way of reminding ourselves of who we are and a promise to ourselves (and our customers) that the heart of our project comes first and will never be sacrificed at the altar of “business”. And so without more ado, this is what that’s going to look like:

Backward is the way forward.

Goodbye sweet loop-the-loop. We’re more assertive than that, after all we’re here creating the “anti-next”. While manufacturers try to sell you on the next big thing we point you back. Literally. Back to Back Market. Back to devices that do the job perfectly well, even if they’re not brand new.

While our old font was friendly and unassuming, growing up has given us more confidence. It was time to look for a bold and elegant font. A font that says: we are the kind of people that look you in the eye and tell you things straight…but that (try to) keep it classy while we do. Meet GT Super. It’s pretty super, we think.

Since we are in the e-commerce business we welcome another more practical font to our arsenal. Clean, straightforward, and easy to read, like the UX we try to give our customers.

And while we’ve got strong convictions, our immoderate love for fun keeps us (and our products) young. We’ve chosen colors that are cheerful and strong, not twee, and that we think show off our special edge.

Finally, we love stickers. But mostly digital ones because they’re cheaper and better for the environment. Maybe you’re starting to see a theme here? Integrity. That’s the point.

Here are more examples of how we’re planning to bring this brand to life:

And we’ll end by putting it all together for you in 30 seconds to the tune of a little Daft Punk:

Some of you might be thinking, “Yikes, why should anyone care what font this unheard of brand is using?”

Well, we like to think that the way someone does anything is the way they do everything. You can see here that we’ve put a lot of thought into who we are and that let’s people know that we must be putting at least the same amount of thought into the needs and wants of our customers and soon-to-be customers.

If even our fonts our meaningful, think how much more our customers mean to us. Four years after we started we are keeping our soul alive, and declaring our love to the people that keep us going. For a startup that’s scaling fast and getting down to business, that’s pretty romantic. It’s also pretty necessary.

Lots of love to Koto, who skillfully helped us understand and transform ourselves. Like a therapist, but for brands. And thank you to Police Studio, who previously worked on our brand to get us to this point.

By: Vianney Vaute / CCO Back Market

The refurbished electronics market seems to be doing great, at least if we go by the numbers of the refurbished smartphone market that have been bandied around so much, with the global refurbished smartphone market (13% y/y growth) outpacing the new smartphone market (3% y/y growth) in 2017. More recent studies show that 2018 was the first time that the global smartphone market has witnessed a decline for an entire year. Some would like to attribute that decline in part to the refurbished/pre-owned smartphone market’s growth.

There is also, of course, the fact that a recent category of higher quality devices that are more dust and water-resistant than ever before means that people can hold on to their devices for longer and then resell their phones for considerable value. A person that sells their smartphone within a year of purchase, for example, can expect to recoup 60–70% of the original cost when selling second-hand. These are all cause for celebration for the Fair Tech movement. With recycling efforts outpaced by the tremendous rate of electronics consumption, extending the lives of devices by holding on to our electronics for longer and supporting a circular economy model around them is a crucial element of fighting the e-waste crisis that we currently face as a nation and worldwide.

That said, it is far from time to bust out the champagne glasses. While sales are going well so far, Nobel-prize winning economist George Akerlof describes issues in his paper, “The Market for Lemons: Quality Uncertainty and the Market Mechanism,” that already plague the refurbish/reuse aspect of the circular economy model in the electronics industry.

The Lemon Effect

A lemon, for those of you who are too young to remember, refers to a car that is found to be defective only after it has already been paid for. Before the age of CarMax and the Kelley Blue Book, buying a used car was a huge bet. There was a reason for that according to Akerlof: where there is an asymmetry of information — in plain English, a lack of transparency about quality from the sellers to the buyers — there is an incentive for sellers to offer lower quality goods while presenting them to be of higher quality. This dynamic is already at play even in the “certified refurbished” market, where unscrupulous sellers that are looking to make quick and easy sales are more than happy to get paid higher prices than what their products are actually worth. Some folks even label products refurbished that have not been properly inspected or repaired.

It’s no surprise that in an in-house poll done by refurbished electronics marketplace, Back Market, of first time refurbished product buyers, 49.6% (a total of 453 respondents out of 917) said that they had not previously purchased refurbished devices because they didn’t feel sure about the quality of refurbished goods. “The Market for Lemons” paper states that in the long run, as buyers are disappointed with their lemons, new buyers begin to factor in the risk of purchasing a lemon in their decision-making. This drives prices down and also drives higher quality goods out of the market, essentially creating a market of junk and potentially causing it to collapse. In that case, we can kiss the circular economy for electronics goodbye.

Making Peaches Out Of Lemons

If the refurbished industry is to be saved, it’s going to need a big makeover — and not just a superficial one. While Akerlof suggested government intervention (which actually gave birth to the Magnusson-Moss Warranty Act) to help prevent the negative effects of quality uncertainty, some might say that it was actually CarMax that disrupted and turned around the image of the used car industry to make it what it is today. CarMax’s model, with detailed test inspections, a warranty and painless buying process, was selling five times more cars than the average new car dealer and 30 times more than the average used car dealer in 1995 — a mere two years after its first store opened. Soon after, competitors of various models began to emerge as the used car market became a more lucrative one. By 2012, used car dealers were selling at a rate comparable to new car sales (in that year, they sold $377 billion in used cars vs. the $316 billion in new car sales).

The refurbished industry is in exactly the same position as the used car market once was and is ripe for someone to take a leadership role. It is only once someone takes ownership of the refurbished device category — putting better standards in place and creating a better buying experience — that we can say that the refurbished market — and the circular economy model for electronic devices — can truly be sustained.

This is precisely the role that Back Market wants to occupy. Our goal is to make buying refurbished devices and appliances a painless and transparent process where a buyer can say with confidence that they are getting exactly what they pay for. While we haven’t quite succeeded yet, working closely with (and even helping to develop) top-notch refurbishers, we believe that we are currently in position to make a real impact — not just on the refurbished market but on the planet too. Having already saved 622 tons of e-waste to date, we’ve already gotten started.

Apple and Amazon have announced what many might consider an innocuous partnership. On the surface, Apple appears to be just another in a long line of brands that will sell their products on the monstrous e-commerce site that has become the go-to shopping destination for many Americans. As the world’s most powerful brand faces a slow-but-steady decline in new device sales, this change in strategy makes sense. Unlike batterygate or the (yet inoperative) T2 chip kill switch on newer Macs, there’s nothing about the partnership that is immediately shocking to the conscience. The average buyer will either applaud or fail to notice this alliance.

And yet, hiding in plain sight is a major shift that spells big trouble for the Fair Repair movement and which — whether they know it or not — spells trouble for consumers as well.

Killing The Competition Means Less Choice

While no one but Apple knows what their end game really is, we can guess that by selling only through ‘Authorized Sellers’ on Amazon (a certification that allegedly only larger sellers with millions in sales can qualify for), they are not only trying to monopolize this very lucrative channel but also trying to discredit anyone who isn’t paying into their system — much like their Authorized Service Provider program, which gives repair shops ‘Authorized’ status for a fee and then takes away up to 75% of their actual repair business. Many observers, like tech blog TechDirt, see something a bit more ominous: “It’s a paywalled garden guarded by Apple and Amazon that will keep all but a select few resellers from participating. Being an Apple reseller/repairer is pay-to-play.”

Conspiracy theorists will point to the slowing of new device sales as a key factor in Apple’s decision to push refurbished products more aggressively.They have recently bolstered their own website with a more prominent used product section, and the deal with Amazon significantly expands their reach beyond that. Refurbished sales have been exploding worldwide and currently represent the fastest growing sector of the smartphone market overall.

Those that will feel the aftermath soonest are, of course, the small businesses and mom-and-pop repair shops that have relied on their Apple-product sales on Amazon. Hundreds of resellers got their walking papers from Amazon recently, informing them that they would no longer be allowed to peddle their Apple wares on the site in 2019 unless they achieve ‘authorized’ status from Apple. While Apple claims that the reseller removal process is a way of reducing the risk of hackers and forgers selling their products, most individual sellers are legit businesses selling reliable products. Many of these businesses, without the Amazon channel, will likely have to fold. Kyle Wiens, CEO of iFixit, speaks for many resellers when discussing the Apple/Amazon tie-up with Motherboard:

“The idea that you have a retailer that if they can strike a deal with the most profitable company in the world and lock out independent resellers is concerning for the future of commerce. It’s kind of mind boggling to think that a brand would be able to restrict sale of used products. This is exactly the kind of control Apple wants to exert over the marketplace.”

But the limits of empathy being what they are, consumers need to be made to understand the trap they are willingly walking into by allowing this to happen and how this will be to their personal detriment in the long run. In the same Motherboard article, Aaron Perzanowski, a law professor at Case Western Reserve University and coauthor of The End of Ownership states that:

“This is a very troubling development. Given Amazon’s dominance as an online retail marketplace, its decision to disregard the first sale rights of resellers will significantly limit consumer choice. The fact that this move was demanded by Apple makes it even more problematic. What we see here are the world’s two most valuable companies engaging in a coordinated assault on the lawful resale of consumer devices.”

The argument that Apple is trying to make, that a monopoly on their part is necessary to keep quality and security standards high, implies that Apple and only Apple is capable of keeping high standards. This is simply not true. While news outlets claim that this alliance will be to the benefit of buyers, there is a lot at stake and the onus is on consumers to educate themselves and to be attentive to its long term repercussions.C/Net claims, for instance, that “With the new deal, customers should expect to see a greater selection of new Apple products and at standard prices” — but read between the lines and you’ll find a push for buying new, a way of limiting options for repairs, and a whole lot of control on pricing.

Suppressing the Right to Repair

The Right to Repair issue continues to dog the electronics industry and Apple has been an active, though often subtle, participant in keeping it suppressed. Indeed, evidence of the Cupertino giant’s role in lobbying efforts ostensibly led by industry groups like CTA and CTIA in at least a dozen US states that were considering Right to Repair legislation has surfaced. None of it more blatant than a visit from an Apple government affairs specialist to Nebraska legislator Lydia Brasch who was supporting a right to repair bill in that state. According to the interview, the Apple agent warned Brasch that such as law would make Nebraska a “mecca for bad actors.” The bill did not pass. (Ironically, Brasch was supporting the initiative mainly to address the similar concerns of farmers that wanted to be able to repair their John Deere tractors on their own terms. She was told by electronics industry lobbyists, “just take the phone part out of the bill and we’ll go away.”)

By putting many legitimate repair/refurbishing shops out of commission and casting doubt on the quality any other shop can offer, Apple is trying to corner the Apple repair market — which might sound fine to you until you see how much Apple wants to charge. You might as well buy a new phone. Interesting.

Gay Gordon-Brown, who heads the Repair Association, says plainly: “If you can’t repair stuff, you’re forced to participate in the throwaway market.” Besides the personal affront over what many consider the inalienable right to do what we want with our own stuff, not allowing freedom of choice in the repair of our electronics is just bad for the planet. With the e-waste problem continuing to grow, everyone has a lot to lose — sellers and buyers alike.

We can bash Black Friday and mindless consumerism until the cows come home, but let’s face it — who doesn’t love a bargain? Credit cards in hand, people are going to go out there en masse the Friday after Thanksgiving and they’re going to keep shopping all the way up until Christmas. There’s a reason that the four week period between Black Friday and Christmas represents a huge chunk of annual retail sales (that number was about 20% in 2014).

This could be seen as a cause for discouragement, but in fact, it is a huge opportunity to be seized. This is a time when retailers and manufacturers are listening and looking for trends, and for conscientious buyers — an excellent time to push for change through their purchases. Last year, on Black Friday weekend, 30% of 174 million people bought consumer electronics. That is a staggering 52,200,000 people — more than the current population of Canada. If just a fraction of that number started being more intentional (and vocal) about their purchases, perhaps in a few years they could help shape trends that would encourage manufacturers to design processes and products that are more sustainable overall.

While we can’t expect minds and hearts to change in a day, there are some first steps that those who are already mindful of the e-waste problem can take this Black Friday, in order to help usher in an age of smarter electronics consumption and “Fair Tech”

1. If It’s Broke, Fix It

This year marks big wins on the part of the Right to Repair movement, with the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) cracking down on manufacturers voiding warranties for devices that have been independently repaired or that have used non-original parts this past April and the late-October ruling from the Library of Congress exempting a large variety of electronics from the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA).

Show manufacturers that you are taking advantage of your right to repair (and use the savings you make to treat yourself or someone else to an experience — a cool show, a nice dinner, a trip out of town.) Before buying something for yourself, ask if you really need to upgrade or change devices right now or if what you have is adequate. For gifts, plan on treating a loved one to the repair of an existing device this holiday season — maybe they have something they love that could use a tune-up.

It’s equally important to be vocal about choosing to repair your devices, in order to encourage others to do the same and also to be heard by high tech and appliance manufacturers that are trying to resist right to repair legislation through back channels. For instance, while people may now lawfully circumvent digital rights management (DRM) software, it’s not illegal for manufacturers to make it difficult, if not impossible to do so — case in point, the alleged kill switch built into new MacBook Pros.

(And repair people, consider offering discounts on your services and DIY kits during Black Friday and the holiday season).

2. Buy Devices Based On Their Repairability

If we want manufacturers to build things that last, we can start by buying things that we plan on keeping for as long as possible. iFixit has a repairability chart for different kinds of electronics, giving them scores of between 1–10, with 1 being the most difficult to repair and 10 being the easiest. Check out their lists for Phones, Tablets, and Laptops. In general, Apple devices are less easily repaired than others but, it should also be noted that particularly for smartphones, Android phones are reputed not to have very good software support as they age.

3. Buy Second-Hand Devices

Keeping devices in circulation for longer means getting the best value out of all the resources used up to create them — and it also helps that these devices often come at a friendlier price than new. While some people are wary about buying pre-owned electronics, there are precautions that can be taken. The safest bet is to stick to professionally refurbished products — devices and appliances that have been thoroughly tested by professionals and repaired, if necessary, so that they function like new.

Just be aware that some people falsely claim to sell refurbished when they are selling untested electronics. A good way to feel confident that a device has been properly refurbished is if it comes with a decent return policy and warranty. A number of reputable marketplaces exist that connect buyers with certified refurbishers, and you should look for at least a 30-day return policy and 6-month warranty.

If you need more reassurance, you can also buy directly from the manufacturer. They often have a longer warranty period; the only issue is that manufacturers don’t always have a robust stock of devices and prices are generally (much) higher.

4. Avoid Manufacturers That Void Warranties Illegally (Or At Least Complain Loudly)

In spite of the recent FTC warning, manufacturers are still slapping on their ubiquitous “void if removed” stickers and illegally voiding warranties, taking advantage of consumers’ ignorance of the Law. A quick look at the warranty terms of any product you purchase should let you know whether the manufacturer says or appears to suggest that independent repair will result in a voided warranty. A survey conducted by the U.S. PIRG Education Fund shows that 45 out of 50 companies reviewed violate the Magnuson-Moss Warranty Act by voiding their warranties. See the complete list here. Some of the more recognizable names on the list include LG Electronics, Samsung, and Philips.

Black Friday Can Also Be Fair Tech Friday

This year, a consumer survey by the National Retail Federation projects holiday retail sales of between $717.45 billion to $720.80 billion in November and December. In spite of remarks about anti-capitalism that inevitably come when there is talk about protecting the environment, the fact is that the best way to create change in the electronic manufacturing industry would be for consumers to change the things that they buy and the way that they buy them.

This Black Friday, thousands of shoppers have the potential to be agents for change, simply by spending the money they were going to spend anyway, in a more thoughtful way and then telling other people about how easy it is to do the same. Starting with just a small pocket of people, we can help spread awareness and to promote realistic, even attractive, alternatives to the current pattern of buying new objects and then thoughtlessly discarding them.

People feel good about recycling, maybe even more so when it comes to electronics. Remembering to take your computer or smartphone and dropping it off to be recycled feels like an accomplishment in itself.

But while electronics recycling isn’t bad — making it a panacea for the e-waste problem we currently have certainly is. Unfortunately, that’s how we tend to frame recycling — and companies are eager to jump on that bandwagon to appear more “green”.

Case in point: Apple. In 2016 there was a lot of fanfare around the unveiling of Liam, a robot capable of dismantling an iPhone in just 11 seconds; an ultra-efficient way to recycle 1.2 million units a year. That sounds impressive until you take into account the fact that Apple had actually sold 231 million new iPhones the year before.

Proudly presented as a symbol of Apple’s commitment to the environment (and since upgraded to Daisy, a slightly more efficient robot that was introduced on Earth Day 2018), Liam is in fact the perfect symbol for recycling in the field of high-tech: a drop of green water in an ocean of pollution, noble but mostly ineffective.

Whether it’s intentional or not, the hype around recycling in the electronics industry is incredibly misleading. The reality is that, as a solution, recycling barely scratches the surface of the growing e-waste crisis. We are currently losing ground in the battle to reduce the environmental impact of our electronic equipment.

The story in numbers

According to a recent UN report, the US produces about 6.3 million tons, or 14% of the world’s electronic waste. Worldwide, almost 45 million tons of electronics were tossed out in 2016. Out of that staggering amount of electronic waste, only 20% has been recycled in some shape or form. The remaining 80% made its way to a more environmentally damaging end at the landfill.

In the US, the rate of recycling is closer to 25%. What most don’t realize is that many “recyclers” actually just ship most of the e-waste abroad where, instead of being recycled, usable parts are repurposed and minerals are extracted. That doesn’t sound terrible, except that it comes at an enormous cost to local populations. Methods used are almost always improper — in some places for example, gold is recovered by bathing circuit boards in nitric and hydrochloric acid, poisoning waterways, and after, whatever is not used is dumped in the ground improperly anyway. The current rate of responsible e-waste recycling is at an abysmal 15.5% worldwide.

Mass consumerism and planned obsolescence outpace recycling efforts

Of course, we can say it’s time to double down on recycling efforts. However, the sheer volumes of e-waste (that continue to grow every year at a rate of 4% each year!) are impossible to cope with. The UN report points out that while there is an increased focus on recycling today compared to the past, the efforts to sustainably reclaim used devices simply can’t keep pace with the massive consumption rates for new devices.

The issue is compounded by the short life cycles of new devices, with manufacturers rushing out new models to eager consumers at a breakneck pace. The report notes that the average smartphone is used for just two years before it gets replaced.

The heart of the issue: overconsumption

Beyond the inherent limitations of collection and recovery processes, we need to remember that recycling is first and foremost a removal from circulation, and therefore an implicit incentive to produce and buy new. In their environmental responsibility report, Apple concedes that 77% of the carbon footprint of their electronics comes from their manufacture, versus the 17% that comes from its actual use. The environmental impact of replacing a device, even if it is recycled after, remains significant.

Recycling should not be used as a balm for the conscience of a pollutant model. While recycling is useful, there is an urgent need to recognize the limits of electronics recycling and to look hard at the root of our growing e-waste problem in order to develop more effective approaches.

At the heart of the issue is a technology sector whose profits are driven by planned obsolescence. Until the industry finds a way to thrive without needlessly pumping out new electronics at the rate that it currently does — all the eco-design processes, recycling programs, and Liam-like innovations will remain symbolic at best, and sleight of hand, at worst.

Reduce and reuse (they come before recycle for a reason)

Only the extension of the life of the devices currently in circulation, through their maintenance, refurbishment, and reuse in one form or another, can have a meaningful effect on their environmental impact. Fighting for ease of repair — led by organizations like repair.org, or developing innovations such as the Fairphone are important pieces of the puzzle. Buying refurbished electronics in lieu of new is another.

Our hopes must not lie on recycling. To have a truly sustainable impact on the e-waste issue, we must produce less to pollute less and to find a way to do that without sacrificing our current quality of life. Increasing our efforts to extend the lives of devices, keeping them out of landfills, and giving them second and third lives, seems to be the most practical and intelligent approach.

HALLOWEEN SPECIAL: ATTACK OF THE ZOMBIELECTRONICS

A true story with an apocalyptic end (that may still, possibly, be averted).

Instead of being faced with the doting and permissive public of earlier times, technology companies are now being asked hard questions about their ethics and their responsibilities to humanity at large. Slowly but surely, even the giants are being forced to listen and to comply.

The sun is setting on the Wild West days of unbridled (and unregulated) data collection, manipulation and sharing. The tech backlash, spurred on by a number of high profile scandals has led to concrete legislation — from large legislative bodies, like the notorious GDPR bill implemented by the European Union this past May — and from local government, like AB 375, a privacy bill passed in California this past July.

There is also a backlash to another less tangible, but equally pernicious, side of the tech industry. Led by non-profits like Common Sense Media and the Center for Humane Technology, Wired has coined the term ‘ethical tech’ for a movement advocating for the protection of minds from the hypnotic and addictive properties of software and social media platforms. It is a coordinated effort to educate the public and at the same time, to ask tech providers to take a look at their products and to ask whether they are actually helping or exploiting their users.

This is all well and good. It is encouraging to see what people can achieve when they band together, and yet, why is it that the ethos is almost exclusively focused on the side of software, usage, and data?

What About The Hardware?

In spite of the flagrant squandering of limited natural resources, the inhumane working conditions in mines, factories, and backroom “recycling” operations, not to mention the escalating e-waste crisis, we have yet to see the same kind of backlash in terms of hardware. Things have stayed more or less the same, even when there is at least just as much at stake as there is with software (and arguably more).

While rigged elections, mind-control, and identity theft are certainly important issues, ones and zeros seem relatively harmless compared to the direct physical threat to humanity posed by our hardware. Are we missing the forest for the trees with regard to the damage tech companies can wreak if left unchecked?

Like other big tech manufacturers, Apple speaks to environmental and labor issues, but while it’s great that they’re doing something (they just switched to 100% green energy) — we must also ask if what they’re doing is truly enough considering their contribution to the existence of these environmental issues and the size of their influence. As Michael Holder says in Green Biz:

…as the newly crowned leader of the global economy, and one which professes to take its green credentials seriously, Apple arguably has more influence than almost any other company on the direction of the global economy…companies such as Apple can and certainly should be doing a lot more to lead as an example for its incredibly rich and powerful tech sector peers.

Apple manages to crunch out innovations each year, and yet somehow their R&D department hasn’t managed to innovate towards a more robust battery that can stay in good condition for more than 2 years. Maybe it’s unfair to demand that. Maybe that’s simply not possible yet. But there are certainly ways to innovate towards more sustainable hardware. Apple could easily go the direction of Dutch phone maker Fairphone and their more earth-friendly devices (the company is also doing other inspiring things with sustainable business practices). But why should they? In the end, they are accountable to their shareholders. It boils down to business priorities. When it comes to sustainability, the whole industry needs a change, and it needs to be incentivized to make big changes.

People have managed to make Facebook and Twitter evolve and there’s no reason the same kind of pressure can’t be applied to tech hardware companies. We’ve seen consumers pressure companies to create change in other physical product industries — boycotts of brands that use unfair labor practices, or avoiding products that contribute to environmental problems (plastic water bottles and straws come to mind). A study by Edelman shows that more 47% of American consumers now buy based on their personal convictions, and a whopping 66% of millennials are belief-driven buyers. The question is whether pervasive ageism in electronics and an obsession with novelty will trump this trend in the electronics category.

According to a recent UN report, in 2016, almost every person in the US owned a smartphone, and every second person owned a tablet. Americans are consuming devices at an unsustainable rate and that’s even if we are actually aware of the issues that plague the electronics industry. We’ve heard about the inhumane conditions in Foxconn, we’ve heard about the mining and child labor in conflict areas, and we’ve heard about what happens to our e-waste. A lot of us were angry about Apple throttling old iPhones. And yet, we haven’t made much headway in resolving these big and seemingly disparate issues.

To start, the answer might simply be to name an organizing principle under which we can begin to rally a community.

From Fragmented Issues To Singular Cause

I propose Fair Tech, broadly defined as the ethics of technology as applied to our hardware (and software as well, to the extent that it intersects with and affects our hardware).

Fair Tech means accounting for finite natural resources. It means demanding that companies find ways to minimize or eliminate the negative effects that sourcing minerals and manufacturing may have on local populations and habitats. It means educating people about the circular economy and creating means to keep electronic products in circulation longer. It demands that we be more thorough about recycling and that we start to design products with the impact of their disposal already in mind. Beyond that, Fair Tech means advocating against planned obsolescence in all its forms, whether it’s psychological obsolescence or the prevention of repairs.

The goal is Fair Tech. It’s time to start a movement.