Fairphone is opening up the supply chain of smart phones to make its processes, pricing and practices transparent and fair. The electronics industry is famous for its lack of fair treatment of labour, think about the suicides and scandals at FoxConn and other suppliers. Electronics make use of many conflict minerals of which proceeds are used to buy weapons for warfare. Fairphone aimed at making a fair phone without the use of conflict minerals. This was found to be impossible due to the complexity of supply chains and in transparencies but they have come pretty far! And they continue with improvements on the way like the housing is made out of post consumer recycled plastic.
So what is different in this phone?
It is for most a good looking, practical Android (Jelly Bean) smart phone with camera, latest bluetooth, wifi, etc but also with 2 simcard slots which is practical for all the frequent flyers as well as for the second life users who often share phones to save cost of ownership.
Focusing on the total life cycle, reducing e-waste, developing a sell-back system for the fairphone
Transparency of the supply chain: Listing their suppliers and 2nd tier suppliers and focus efforts on the first generation phone on providing a living wage to workers at a factory level where the product is produced
Transparency of the cost price
Fair payment of labour in the supply chain
Conflict free mineral use and well on the way to have only fairtrade gold and cobalt in the phone
Pretty ambitious and already 19,000 of the first batch of 25,000 sold!
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