A move towards subscription-based models for smartphones and embracing a circular economy through refurbishment can mitigate and reduce the e-waste currently being experienced from the disposal of devices.

There is a need for a new model and a new culture of consumption, given the rising upgrading and subsequent disposal of devices, which results in a significant environmental toll by producing unnecessary e-waste.

“A new model of consumption that accounts for rising levels of e-waste needs to be adopted and it starts with analysing how we consume these products in the first place,” says on-demand subscription platform Rentoza chief marketing officer Mishaan Ratan.

In South Africa, mobile device e-waste is partly driven by the phone contract model in which telecommunications companies provide a new handset at the end of every contract after 36 months.

“Once they upgrade to a new device, people generally find it difficult to sell the old devices. If they are damaged, it then becomes uneconomical to repair them,” Ratan comments.

“Without an alternative outlet to drive these devices, you start having this effect where you start having exponentially more devices being discarded in the market as time goes by,” he says, pointing out that about two-billion mobile phones are sold each year.

While handheld devices account for 10% of e-waste globally, the total yearly carbon footprint of manufacturing mobile phones is equal to at least the yearly carbon emissions of a small country.

According to the UK-based Restart Project, which aims to help people learn how to repair their broken electronics and rethink how they consume them, the average mobile phone creates an estimated 55 kg of carbon emissions in the manufacturing process.

Locally, the e-Waste Association of South Africa says the country generates about 6.2 kg of e-waste per citizen each year, with only 12% of this recycled.

Ratan says this can largely be avoided by instilling a culture that preserves devices instead of disposing of them.

“We desperately need to adopt a culture of refurbishment. This is the only economically responsible way to deal with the problem at hand.

“All of us can help reduce the impact of our mobiles by simply using them for longer. We can buy repairable mobiles, repair them when broken and stop replacing them so frequently.”

Further, the use of every phone sold this year for one-third longer will prevent carbon emissions equal to the yearly emissions of a country the size of Ireland within three years, assuming new purchases are displaced.

In addition, the production of phones requires a large amount of water, both in the mining process and in the manufacture of chips, while the mining processes create significant amounts of waste, as mobiles are extremely materially complex and contain valuable raw materials, only a small part of which is recycled.

Ratan believes adopting a subscription mentality will increase demand for refurbished devices and bolster a circular economy in which e-waste is significantly reduced.

“At the heart of subscription is non-ownership. What that means immediately for these products is that, instead of throwing old products away, you can return them. The benefits of subscription are that we are then able to extend the life of a product up to seven usable years in some cases.”

This allows subscription companies like Rentoza to recirculate devices constantly to ensure that even people looking for a feature phone can access a new- generation smart device at a comparable cost and then return it when they are done.