The greenest phone has already been made

Column: from the perspective of a student whose laptop matters more than his bed.

There is no such thing as a sustainable new smartphone. That is an awkward announcement for manufacturers who now ship their devices in unbleached cardboard, but the proportions are what they are: 70 to 85 percent of a phone's climate impact has already happened before the box is opened. Mines, chip factories, assembly halls, a new device represents 60 to 90 kilos of CO2 before the first message is sent. A laptop: 200 to 300 kilos. No power-saving mode or green screensaver can rescue any of that.

Once you know this, you watch the annual launch events differently, the ones where a phone is unveiled that barely differs from its predecessor. The entire industry is built on a rhythm, replace every two years, that rests on nothing except habit and an expiring contract. The climate blow is not in our usage but in that rhythm.

The good news is that the rhythm can be broken, in two ways that reinforce each other. The first is banal: keep going with what already exists. Using a phone for four years instead of two halves the production impact per year of use; having a new battery fitted is almost always wiser than a new device. The second is buying refurbished when things are truly worn out. The factory stays closed: refurbishing, testing and shipping typically cost less than a tenth of the impact of new. A refurbished phone saves 50 to 80 kilos of CO2, a laptop three to four times that, and 30 to 50 percent of the price, which in a thesis year is the difference between a decent machine and a cash machine that refuses.

The scepticism, second-hand with a ribbon on it, is healthy, but by now outdated. Serious refurbishers publish condition grades, replace wear parts and offer one to three years of warranty; anyone wanting to know which sellers deserve the trust can consult the trend overviews at Risegoods. The risk is comparable to buying new. Only the feeling when opening the box is different, and that feeling is precisely what the industry builds its margins on.

The least exciting piece of climate advice in existence is therefore also the most effective: buy nothing. And if you must buy something: something that already exists.

The phone this is being read on, meanwhile, works fine. What is wrong with it, really? And if the answer is "nothing", where did that longing for a new one come from?