Fairphone – Working towards systemic change with region-wide impact

26 April 2022

Our ASI membership is important because…

… it helps us meet our sustainable sourcing goals for aluminium, one of our 14 focus materials.

Fairphone’s mission is to motivate the entire industry to act more responsibly by establishing a viable market for ethical electronics. In accordance with our mission, and to ensure the integration of responsibly sourced aluminium in our supply chain, we rerouted our supply chain to an ASI certified vendor. ASI certification was the proof point that the supplier was adhering to the sustainability principles that were important to us.

'ASI certification was the proof point that the supplier was adhering to the sustainability principles that were important to us.' - Tirza Voss, Impact Innovation and Sustainable Materials & Mining Manager at Fairphone

We’re committed to improving environmental and social impacts

During 2020, we updated our Fair Material Sourcing Roadmap and we set ourselves the goal to ensure that 70% of the 14 focus materials in our supply chain comes from fairly mined/recycled sources.

We rely on ASI standards for our aluminium sourcing and in line with the standards, we are committed to improving environmental and social impacts as well as supporting workers’ health, rights, and well-being with our supply chain choice.

We do everything possible to keep our products at their highest value for as long as possible. We incentivise our customers to give back old phones and we have optimized our take-back and repair logistics. This way, a device is repaired and reused for as long as possible, before being responsibly recycled at the very end of its life cycle. Our continuous move toward true circularity isn’t just a good way to reduce e-waste, it keeps the materials in smartphones at their highest possible value, and it also reduces the amount of CO2 emitted by reducing the manufacturing of brand-new phones.

We also apply our Fair Sourcing Principles, which are key in the way we integrate our focus materials in our supply chain and are central to our sourcing decisions. We:

• Use our buying power as a catalyst for investments
• Address risks as opportunities
• Achieve continuous improvements and report on progress
• Work towards systemic change with region-wide impact.

We rely on ASI standards for our aluminium sourcing and in line with the standards, we are committed to improving environmental and social impacts as well as supporting workers’ health, rights, and well-being with our supply chain choice.

-Tirza Voss, Impact Innovation and Sustainable Materials & Mining Manager at Fairphone

The journey continues

Using an ASI certified supplier for our Fairphone 4 is just the start of our journey. On a broader scale and in relation to our other focus materials, we invest at the origin of supply chains and encourage communities to use mining as a driver for positive change and economic development. We are also positively impacting several Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) namely, No poverty, Gender Equality, Decent work and Economic Growth, Reduced Inequalities and Responsible Consumption and Production.

We continue to explore using post-consumer recycled aluminium in our phones. We may have to find a way to reduce or remove the imperfections of recycled aluminium. It’s a worthy challenge and one which could have important implications. We look forward to engaging our suppliers and the wider industry on this.

Fairphone is building a market for ethical phones and motivating the industry to act more responsibly.

LEARN MORE ABOUT FAIRPHONE

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