minds of millions and craft a better, more fairer  phone industry. The campaigners worked hard to  

raise consciousness and change the minds of phone  users. They established workshops that explained  

the complexities and horrors of a smartphone  supply chain, and encouraged the public to imagine  

what a fairer phone would be. But after two and a  half years, Apple, Samsung, and other giants kept  

exploiting and polluting. So, the awareness  campaign decided to do something a little  

different. They tried to make a fairer phone. This  is the story of that phone. How it's made, whether  

it's actually a good phone, and whether it's  the sustainable solution to the phone industry.

This video is sponsored by CuriosityStream,  

which now comes with Nebula for free when you  sign up using the link in the description.

Sustainability: The Fairphone, now in its third iteration,  

is doing something remarkable. Its foregrounding  sustainability and ethical labor practices  

throughout the phone's whole lifecycle. A feat  which Fairphone cofounder Miquel Ballester told me  

feels a lot like “swimming against the streams.”  Miquel and I talked a lot about the company,  

and you can access the entire interview on Nebula  or Patreon. When it comes to sustainability in  

smartphones there are really four areas to  consider: production, modularity, longevity,  

and recyclability. At first glance, Fairphone  seems to excel in all these categories when  

compared to other flagship phones. The Fairphone  begins in the production stage where the bulk of  

Fairphone's environmental impact comes from. The  potential global warming impact of a Fairphone 3  

is 39.5 kg of carbon dioxide equivalent. That's  a little over half of the Iphone 12's footprint.  

And of that 39.5 kg, roughly 81% comes from  the production phase, which encompasses mining  

of the materials all the way up to the day it  leaves the factory. One of the ways Fairphone  

has been able to drastically cut their impact  has been transportation. The phone is currently  

only sold in Europe so the company is able  to use trains instead of planes to transport  

all of their goods. As a result, they've reduced  the phone's transportation emissions by 87%.  

Equally as impressive is the phone's modularity.  Modularity is where Fairphone rises above the  

pack. It takes 8 minutes to replace the screen  and 8 seconds to replace the battery. Unlike  

Apple or Samsung, the parts that matter aren't  glued down, so it's really easy to get into  

the phone and switch things out. This modularity  was so impressive that iFixit gave the Fairphone  

a 10/10 for repairability, and the new French  Repairability Index awarded the phone an 8.7/10,  

docking points for lack of phone blueprints  and delivery time of spare parts. But overall,  

this is markedly better than the iPhone 12s  6/10 score. And this modularity matters because,  

according to a third party lifecycle assessment  of the Fairphone, the core module of the phone,  

or where the circuit board and brains of the  phone live, accounts for 72% of the global  

warming potential of the whole phone. That means  that if users can just replace a camera part  

or a battery instead of the whole phone, they can  drastically reduce the phone's footprint. Indeed,  

one of the philosophies behind the phone  is “Don't buy a new phone buy a new camera,  

because really changing the camera of your phone  is 6% of the CO2 emissions of the whole device.”  

The modular nature of Fairphone greatly  increases the longevity of the phone,  

but unfortunately Fairphone still has some  work to do in terms of lifespan. At the moment,  

Fairphone provides support to phones up to  5 years old. Their goal is to reach 7 years,  

but there are factors outside of the company's  control like constant hardware and software  

updates that are making this difficult “We are  swimming against the streams there, with building  

a long lasting phone.” That's Monique Lempers,  Impact Innovation Director at Fairphone, “Certain  

components become end of life before our product  becomes end of life. Also at software level,  

we have to find workarounds to stretch the  software. It's an incredible challenge.”  

But even after the phone stops working,  Fairphone is still there. They're building  

out a robust recycling and repair network that  seeks to not only breathe life back into broken  

Fairphone parts, but they're also establishing  “a recycling program for any phone that you might  

want to give us. We either recycle it or refurbish  it.” The Fairphone itself is made up of 45.1% of  

recycled materials, which on their website,  Fairphone admits should be better. Especially  

if one of their end goals is to reach a near zero  impact. But the sustainable future of Fairphone  

looks a little different than just a phone. Miquel  says these steps are building up to what he calls,  

“Fairphone as a service.” Envisioning the company  not as a phone maker but something much larger:  

“it's not so much attached to the hardware  that we sell, but to the service that we give  

to customers. You can serve more customers with  less stuff. Everything that we have done in having  

the product more repairable and long lasting  would be pushed further. The more we would make  

the phones repairable the less it would cost us  to serve every customer.” So, even after you buy a  

Fairphone, its performance and impact will still  be the company's responsibility. Incentivizing  

them to make the best, longest lasting phone. A  model similar to the bottle deposit systems of  

soda companies. In short, compared to Apple and  Samsung phones, Fairphone seems to be one of the  

environmentally conscious phones on the market.  But what about the company's labor practices?

Ethics: 

Trace any mineral required for smartphones like  gold, tungsten or tin back to its source and  

you'll often find yourself in one of the many  precious metal mines in the eastern regions of  

the Democratic Republic of Congo. Mines that were  born out of the imperialist resource extraction  

of the Global North and are now used to finance  bloody conflicts in the region. These mines,  

often employing forced child labor in terrible  conditions with paramilitary presence are what  

keep the prices of technology low. In short,  the U.S. and Europe gorge on cheap computers and  

phones and dump the true price of electronics onto  the majority world in the form of slave labor,  

gruesome working conditions, and bloody  wars. In an attempt to make a fairer phone,  

Fairphone is diving into their supply chains  headfirst, hoping to change mining conditions  

and influence other corporations to do the same.  Conflict minerals are the very reason Fairphone  

began, but because “the phone has over 600-700  suppliers. Relationships change all the time.  

In that context it's quite a challenge to  build long lasting relationships and to  

trace your sources.” Despite this, the  company is still making some headway.  

One way they've approached minerals is by building  coalitions with other companies to gain leverage  

over supply chains. Fairphone did this with  their Cobalt Alliance initiative. “For the  

Fair Cobalt Alliance to exist actually we could  not do it on our own. That's why we had to knock  

doors and convince the Signify's of the world  because they have the real volume when it comes  

to cobalt and batteries… We need more volume  to do the things we want to do.” So with the  

help of larger companies like Tesla and Signify,  Fairphone and the Fair Cobalt Alliance claim to be  

working to assure the eraditcaiton of child labor,  create ethical working conditions, and the spur  

economic diversification of mining communities  to lessen their reliance on mineral extraction  

in the Democratic Republic of Congo. Further up  the supply chain, Fairphone recently instigated  

a living wage bonus for all the employees at their  production factory in China. After some research  

and surveying factory workers on their ideal wage,  Fairphone found that it only needed to raise the  

price of its phone by 1.5 euros or .33% of its  sales price to increase the wages. Wages that are  

now the equivalent of 4 times the minimum wage  of the region. While this is an amazing start,  

especially compared to the wages Apple factory  workers make in China, it's just a beginning.

The Edges of a Unfair System: 

Here's the thing, Fairphone is still not as fair  as it can be. A fact which the company admits over  

and over on their website and their founder, Bas  van Abel, mentions in a podcast: “If you want to  

create a fair phone you have to create world peace  first.” Abel goes on to add “If you want to change  

the system, by becoming part of the system, that  means that you're going to be dictated by the same  

system.” Fairphone is doing the best it can in  an inherently unethical capitalist imperialist  

system, which necessitates low wages, ignoring  environmental destruction, and exploits the  

Global South in order to extract maximum profit.  Profit which gets shoved into the pockets of the  

owning class or funneled back into companies  to fuel endless growth in a finite world. Don't  

get me wrong, the Fairphone is definitely one of  the best options if you need to buy a new phone,  

but the point here is this: capitalism has now  successfully blended the idea of consumerism  

with an activist identity, espousing a false  narrative that buying ethical clothes or green  

phones is the way to stop the climate crisis and  worker exploitation. The reality is a far cry  

from this illusion. First, the most sustainable  phone is the phone you have in your pocket, which,  

to their credit, Fairphone repeats again and again  in their videos and blog posts. While Fairphone  

did raise wages for their workers, they still have  to operate in our current economic system, which  

means that some amount of value of the labor being  produced from Fairphone employees and supply chain  

workers is being siphoned off to investors and  the owner class. If systemic change doesn't occur,  

Fairphone will forever be fighting against  the current. For the time being, Fairphone  

is helping encourage people to care about  quality, repairability, and ethical practices.  

It's a lightning rod for companies and consumers  to point at and say, “hey we can do better.” As  

Miquel notes, the phone is an “an artifact for  change.” But in my opinion, to truly create a  

fair phone we need to collectively envision an  economic system outside of capitalism. One that  

leans on degrowth and eco-socialist principles  and that allows workers to be fully compensated  

for the value of their labor and accounts for  its environmental impact. The only way towards  

this is through movement building, mutual aid,  and true collective democracy. Fairphone shows  

that there's a better way within. It shows us  there's a way to build and create technologies  

with an emphasis and longevity and ethics rather  than quick turnarounds and profits. But it seems  

like they are reaching the edge of capitalism,  so to find the new frontier, to find a place  

where Fairphone doesn't have to swim upstream  just to be fair, we have to build a new system.

Two weeks ago I released a video about  Eco-Fascism. It initially did really well,  

and lots of people were sharing it around,  but then views started to plateau and it was  

slapped with an unsuitable for most ads label.  In short, the video was buried. Which is one of  

the reasons why a bunch of creator friends  and I teamed up to create a platform where  

we can make content without having to worry  about pleasing the YouTube algorithm. It's  

called Nebula and we're thrilled to be partnering  with Curiosity Stream. Nebula is an ad-free video  

streaming platform that allows creators to create  without worrying about views or demonetization.  

Nebula has exclusive content from a wide range  of educational YouTubers like Polymatter,  

Wendover Production, and Me. That's right, when  you sign up for Nebula and CuriosityStream,  

you'll get access to both the full length  interviews I did with Fairphone for this video.

But what does this have to do with  CuriosityStream? Well as the go to  

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