Situated Sustainability
for Mobile Phones
Elaine M. Huang
Motorola Labs and RWTH Aachen University | elaine. m.huang@motorola.com
Khai N. Truong
University of Toronto | khai@cs.toronto.edu
[ 1] http://www.gartner.
com/press_releases/
asset_132473_ 11.ht ml
[ 2] NPD Group: “143
Million Mobile Phones
Sold in the US in 2006”
http://www.itfacts.biz/
index.php?id=P8297
[ 3] “U.S. Wireless
Mobile Phone
Evaluation Study,” J.D.
Power and Associates,
2007.
Worldwide sales of mobile phones are expected
to exceed one billion by the year 2009 [ 1]. In 2006,
143 million mobile phones were sold in the United
States alone [ 2], and a 2007 study showed that
American consumers use their phones for only an
average of 17. 5 months before replacing them [ 3].
Despite the global proliferation of phones, only 5
percent of phones are ever recycled [ 2], thus leading to a massive potential problem of e-waste.
factors add to the proliferation of devices and disposal of technically functional phones.
When we began our study of mobile phone
replacement and disposal practices, we were
motivated by two goals stemming from the disposable technology paradigm. Our first goal was
to understand what factors influenced people’s
decisions to replace their phones and what their
practices for doing so were. Our second motivating goal for studying this phenomenon was to take
that understanding and apply it toward the design
of “greener” phones—those that would encourage
longer use, less frequent disposal, more sustainable replacement practices, and overall reductions
in e-waste. After undertaking our study, however,
we discovered the importance of context in how
people replace and dispose of their phones and
realized that this context, in addition to the design
of the object itself, should be taken into account
when designing for and assessing the sustainability
of objects. This approach, which we term situated
sustainability, supports the identification of the various challenges and opportunities for improving the
sustainability of the object on a broader scale.
[ 4] Blevis, E.
“Sustainable
Interaction Design:
Invention & Disposal,
Renewal & Reuse.” In
the Proceedings of CHI
2007, 503-512.
Phones as Disposable Technology?
There is an increasingly common trend of acquiring technologies, most notably consumer electronics, with the expectation that they will be replaced
or disposed of before they cease to be functionally viable. We refer to this trend as the disposable
technology paradigm, and it is visible in increasingly
ubiquitous devices such as laptops and portable
mp3 players, which are typically replaced within a
few years and whose usage lifetime is often much
shorter than their functional lifetime. Mobile
phones appear to be the most widespread example
of such “disposable” technologies, and we therefore
chose them as the starting point for our research
into this phenomenon. The proliferation of these
devices is a leap for communication capability,
but their rapid consumption and turnover pose an
increasingly urgent problem of waste and pollution. Mobile phones are a unique case of e-waste
in many ways. Unlike most other personal devices,
they often have a built-in replacement cycle as
users receive a new device on a regular basis by
renewing their service contracts, regardless of the
state of their previous device. And in the case of
North America, where we conducted our study,
technology incompatibility can also necessitate
getting a new phone, for example when someone
switches from CDMA service to GSM service. These
Toward Sustainable Mobile Phone Design
Our perspective in approaching this work was
strongly influenced by the rubric posited by Eli
Blevis, in which he suggests several ways to understand and critique the sustainability of a design by
considering such crucial issues as whether its components can be recycled, whether it lends itself to
being shared or passed along to others, and whether the design promotes longevity of use [ 4]. We did
not harbor illusions that the treatment of mobile
phones as disposable technologies was either solely
due to their design or a problem that could be
solved entirely through better interaction design.