Over 7 billion smartphones were made between 2007 and 2017 (Jardim 2017). Around 1.46 billion were made in 2018 alone (Holst 2019a). There are over 3 billion smartphone users in the world. China, India and the United States have the largest number, at more than 100 million each. The number of people who use smartphones is expected to grow by several hundred million in the next few years, with developing and emerging economies growing the most (Holst 2019b; Poushter, Bishop and Chwe 2018).
Everything about a smartphone (production, use and disposal) has important impacts on the environment and human health. Smartphone
production is very energy intensive, and its energy footprint is increasing (Jardim 2017). Smartphones contain critical raw materials, conflict minerals and many different hazardous (Gabbatis 2019; European Parliament 2017; Chen et al. 2018; Jha 2018). Getting rid of many different hazardous substances in smartphones would help protect consumers, as well as workers health and safety. It would enable safer recycling without perpetuating a “toxic cycle”. Consumers only know a little bit about the harsh conditions in which the mining, extraction and refining of materials used in smartphones takes place or the likely environmental impacts of these activities, including impacts on biodiversity in some locations (Business Today 2017; Kara 2018).
