iPhone: Greener Gadget Yes or No?
by George Spyros, New York City, USA on 04.30.08
With its unique touchscreen and potentially hazardous materials lurking behind it, is the iPhone a small green leap forward?
This post goes out to Alan, the intrepid community moderator over at Planet Green and here at TreeHugger, who's expertise and deft touch I admire.
Recently I wrote a post entitled NYC Bicycle Shelter Parking iPhone Photos: How Street It Is wherein I put up some snaps I grabbed on the fly using said technology. The comments, excerpted below, found my mention of the iPhone by turns "ridiculous," "pretentious," and "lame." So why on (protect the) earth would I even include the word iPhone? Could it be because it is a greener gadget?
Around the time leading up to the release of the iPhone, about a year ago, Greenpeace was turning up the heat on Steve Jobs and Apple Computer to not only innovate by bringing elegantly designed and user-friendly products to market, but also to shape its products and business practices with the environment in mind. At the time, I called the retort of record from Jobs, A Greener Apple, "a tad defensive." I'm hoping not to find myself aping Jobs' tone here when I say concurrent with all of those goings on, I myself had no designs or burning interest whatsoever in participating in iPhone fever, rather I simply wanted to deal with the personal tech crisis of my seven-year-old Titanium PowerBook having been smashed. 
In my post on that topic, I used the (to me) amusing and colorful event to plug a key distinction between the new Apple laptops, that the 15-inch models had LED screens, and therefore are mercury and arsenic free, while it was little known that the 17-inch models were not. Furthermore, it seemed a fine opportunity to tell folks about an awesome electronic waste disposal event coming up (which by the way just happened again this year). All of this is by way of pointing out that I make a modest attempt in my everyday life to lesson my ecological footprint due to manufacture and shipping of tech by metaphorically driving into the ground and using to death, call it what you will, any computer or gadget I purchase; and then I attempt to lessen my hazardous chemical footprint with proper disposal and recycling habits.
So a few months later when the streaming video of Live Earth from Australia rolled around the globe midnight my time, I immediately snarked at the band Eskimo Joe who's lead singer was proclaiming in so many words that dealing with the environmental crisis before us had "nothing to do with the iPhone coming out." To clarify, while the computer and electronic industries may not be leading drivers of climate change beyond the above mentioned manufacturing and shipping impacts common to most industries, climate change the symptom is but itself the tip of the melting iceberg as it were (now that simile is in fact incredibly lame!) of the environmental crisis facing life on earth for we humans as we know it. As I told Jacob Gordan on TreeHugger Radio in the context of discussing the release of the film The Eleventh Hour, the collapse of ecosystems, species loss, pollution, the water crisis etc. were then beginning to integrate into the discussion and hopefully the consciousness of more and more people. By Earth Day this year, colleagues such as Simran Sethi, Sarah Rich, and Ben Jervey began to dig in their heals behind the issue-oriented Enviro New Wave; and well they should as should we all because moving beyond eco-tips hinged to the notion of mitigating atmospheric CO2, methane and other GHGs, notwithstanding the importance of doing so, is critical toward achieving the type of deep systemic change necessary for preserving life as we know it. In short, we are interdependent with other forms of life on this planet which must be preserved, sustained and celebrated for our continued (and hopefully for the most part joyous) interdependence with one-another to continue.
Such are the stakes behind conversations like those of the Greener Gadgets Conference in February. The Electronics Materials and Lifecycle panel discussion raised the importance of the iPhone as a step in the right direction: it is a greener gadget simply for the reason that its interface is infinitely upgradable in that it has no physical keyboard. Easy to apply software updates provided via the internet further extend the life of the product. Is the iPhone a groundbreaking Cradle To Cradle design? Certainly not as one will clearly see when they WATCH>> this two-minute video. [Scientist Guts iPhone Snooping For Hazardous Materials] Greenpeace ripped apart an iPhone to isolate which hazardous materials and toxic chemicals were present and in what amounts. Verdict: brominated flame retardants (BFRs), chlorine, pthalate-rich PVC. Remember, as Dr. Michael Braungardt points out in the book Cradle to Cradle, substances which are toxic to humans exist in nature, indeed corporal damage and death await us around each turn, so the pie-in-the-sky notion of eliminating all such materials in our technologies would not only be naïve but certainly ridiculous. However the larger point is for the makers of products to take responsibility for the end-of-life of their goods, which Apple like so many others have yet to work out. Which is why, given the life-extending features of the interface in contradistinction to the current hazards presented by its end of use, the iPhone can be categorized as a greener gadget while not necessarily a green one.
In pretentious conclusion, given my consideration that the iPhone represents a positive green step, I chose to plug the iPhone not once but twice in my post about the bicycle shelter.
Here is a sampling of the comments from that post NYC Bicycle Shelter Parking iPhone Photos: How Street It Is:
BWJ
First I want to comment on how ridiculous it is that you mentioned your iPhone, not just once, but twice...in the tile of the post even! Can we say pretentious?
surfcam
I was also totally confused by the mention of the iPhone! What does that have to do with the bike rack?? Poor journalism if you ask me.
Christina
Does it matter the iPhone took it? Quality isn't even that good.
Maybe I should name my photos from my camera.
"NYC Bicycle Shelter Parking Sony PHotos : How Street it is"
Not to mention neither Apple or Sony have anything to do with the story.
Gregory
lame that the iphone was mentioned twice BUT...
god knows what's in the laptop you're commenting from.
A computer is a big choice, lots of hazmats and the likes. the impact of which should be one that EVERYONE is looking towards more as e-waste piles up at horrific levels
I've got a clunky old desktop and an iPhone because i'm on a bicycle all the time.
this is a professionally put together blog, bite your thumbs and note that he is blogging on the go using a device that's smaller and has less of an impact than the battery in your macbook
via: Susty.tv
I'm typing this on my Apple laptop to clear up that I wasn't commenting on the "greeness" of Apple (which was never touched upon in your bike shelter article, and who I truly admire for being a green leader in technology) but on your irrelevant references to your iPhone.
Your plugs added no value to the review of the bike shelters and this long winded attempt to place that irrelevancy in context, has failed.
I'm glad I was able to leave this comment using my Apple MacBook Pro.
ok, I remember the bike shelter article and I also remember thinking "would we be having this same argument about pretension if he's taken the photos with his blackberry/sidekick?" I saw it as an explanation for the quality of the photos, not a plug for the iphone.
having said that - it is truly a greener device...if only for it's consolidation. By having an iphone (or similar technology) you've taken what was once 4 separate devices: a PDA, Phone, camera, ipod and created one. Less production, less waste. And less bulk in your pockets/purse. I'm all for it.
In the sense that I can easily do email and minor web tasks without firing up a big, power-hungry computer, the iPhone is very green. But if you are looking into the energy and materials used for construction, I don't think any electronic device would be considered green.
As mentioned above, the fact that one can quickly check e-mail, directions, news, and heck, even Treehugger.com without firing up a computer makes the iPhone green.
The fact that I've been wanting an all-in-one phone for years has prevented me from ever buying a Palm Pilot, so the amount of paper I waste on Post-Its is insane.
This post has confirmed what I've always thought -- An iPhone is a greener device. Green, no, but no electronic is.
Thank you for making me feel as though the iPhone I've been lusting after is a smart choice.
Though I do have one question that I have never looked into (Considering I thought of it just now): Is an iPhone as recyclable as any other cell phone? Is it as recyclable as a Blackberry or a Palm Treo?
Now that would make an interesting article. One I hope to read before I get a new phone at the end of the summer.
The iPhone has a modular interface because it does not have an array of unchangeable buttons. Thus, its functionality can be updated in ways a non-modular device (such as a Blackberry or Treo) cannot.
This means that users of the iPhone will potentially be able to keep their device around for much longer without upgrading since its functionality can so easily be upgraded via software.
To me, this makes the iPhone more environmentally friendly than its competitors, regardless of any toxic components it may have (though clearly they are important too).
Still not green to me. Or if being green means being able to do a lot of functions on a smaller device, that would incorporate a lot of phones. Not just the iPhone.
WinMo devices, Blackberry, and even Palm devices should be considered green as well then. Since they do a lot of tasks on a much smaller scale. If the same reason makes the iPhone green, it should work the same for all such devices.
Oh, and Treehugger, I'm kinda disappointed you didn't take my comment and quoted it. I read this site a lot. I just thought it was rather ridiculous to state the device the photos came from, since it shouldn't matter and sounded like product placement.
Greener Gadgets was in February.