iPhone, youPhone, We All Scream for E-Waste

The U.S. launch of the new Apple iPhone last Friday attracted a lot of attention from consumers, businesses, Apple competitors and the news media. By Monday, Apple reported that it had sold 1 million iPhones in the three days following the release of the latest model, iPhone 3G.

The iPhone 3G was launched simultaneously in 21 countries, adding to the market more hybrid phones to the 6 million units that Apple has already sold of the first-model iPhone since it launched in the U.S. a year ago. The company has a goal of selling 10 million iPhones by the end of 2008.

The iPhone 3G is going to be very popular, judging from the thousands of people in North America, Asia and Europe who waited in long lines for hours to get their chance to buy one. In Japan, the line of customers stretched for half a mile from the flagship store of Softbank, which won the right to sell the iPhone 3G. According to Bloomberg, the store's entrance was besieged by reporters, while helicopters circled overhead as an LED display counted down to the second when the handset went on sale. Not many events short of a new Batman movie generate that kind of interest.

The new $199 iPhone is priced $200 less than its predecessor, but the increased cost of the data plan works out to an extra $240 during the life of the two-year contract, a SiliconVaslley.com columnist pointed out. IPhone users will pay at least $70 a month, which adds up to $840 a year, plus taxes and fees. Yet, customers seem willing, even eager, to pay.

The iPhone not only appears destined to rule the consumer market. A recent Goldman Sachs survey of its IT executives indicated that 17% expect to support the iPhone 3G during the next year.

So, naturally, what seems like savvy business marketing for a sound product by Apple makes me, as an environmentalist, wonder about all those millions of mobile phones the new iPhone 3G will be replacing. If 10 million iPhones are supplying communications around the world, that means a potential 10 million “outdated” mobile phones will be scraped. How many cell phones will see proper recycling or disposal? How many usable units will be willed to next of kin or donated to charities? How many electronic gadgets will go to the world’s landfills, already teeming with e-waste?

Receiving a little less publicity than the iPhone 3G was a global survey conducted by Nokia, which found that most retired mobile phones are left in drawers instead of being recycled. Only 3% of those surveyed said they recycled their mobile phones, while an amazing 44% said they simply hang on to their old phones, storing them out-of-site in their homes. Like those expired grocery coupons you find stuffed in the back of a drawer or an old magazine you forgot you were keeping for an article you never got a chance to finish reading, these electronic items seem destined to be tossed out with the trash rather than recycled.

Network World quoted a Nokia spokeswoman as saying a lack of awareness is the biggest challenge to mobile phone recycling, with 74% of consumers admitting that they don't think about recycling their phones, and half not even aware that phones, like all electronic devices, can be recycled.

Business Week says the survey results demonstrate that handset makers and telecom carriers aren’t doing enough to encourage mobile phone recycling.

Perhaps a statement I found in a PC World article speaks volumes to the impact iPhone and similar gadgets will have in the near future. One of the people quoted in line for an iPhone 3G on opening day said, “I am basically already using the iPhone as a replacement for my computer.”

Like the lowly, end-of-lifecycle computer, iPhones and all other mobile gadgets that have the potential to influence global communications – for a short time - could have a larger, longer-term impact on the worldwide e-waste crisis unless they are recycled.