Fixed for the Holidays – Refurbished Technology Factsheet

We can’t keep making and tossing phones at the current rate:

• The production of smartphones produces carbon pollution equivalent to the Philippines, a country with a population of 100 million people. Roughly 90% of the total climate pollution from phones comes from their production and distribution.
• Smartphones contribute to 10% of global e-waste. Roughly 80% of this waste is burnt or dumped in landfills.

Buying refurbished or used phones protects the environment:

• Buying refurbished cuts the environmental impact of buying a device by between 77% and 91%.
• The average customer buys a new phone every two-and-a-half years, even while 80% of these phones are still working.
• If we held on to our phones one year longer on average, the emissions reductions would be equivalent to taking 636,000 cars off the road and would reduce manufacturing material demand by 42.5 million pounds per day — which would be like cutting a jumbo-jet’s weight in raw material use every 17 minutes.

Photo by Staff | TPIN

More customers are opting for refurbished phones

• Refurbished smartphone shipments grew 15% last year, while new smartphone sales rose only 4.5%.

Table by Back Market.