Fair Materials

Smartphones contain dozens of materials sourced from every corner of the globe – each with its own story and its own complex supply chain.

How your phone is made matters because these materials have both a social and an environmental impact. The electronics sector has a responsibility as well as the opportunity to address and catalyze social and environmental improvements throughout material chains. One material at a time, we’re working to incorporate fairer materials, including responsibly mined and recycled materials in our phones. We want to go straight to the source to make sure we’re creating positive change.

Our approach: Responsible mining and recycled materials

We want the materials in our phones to come from more sustainable sources that deliver social and environmental benefits. To achieve this, we’re tracking where our phone’s materials come from and then finding and creating demand for more responsibly-sourced materials.

In line with our Fair Sourcing Principles, instead of turning away from mines and countries where human rights and environmental risks are present, we engage and invest in improvements. For responsible mining, we will focus on artisanal and small-scale mining (ASM). Often operating outside the formal mining sector (and related regulations), these types of mines offer the most potential for directly improving the lives of miners and their families.
The ASM mining sector employs around 44 million people in the world, indirectly creating employment in auxiliary sectors of 40 million people and supporting an additional estimated 150-200 million people.

Besides that, more industry efforts are needed to scale the effective recycling of post-consumer waste and ensure more responsible recycling. We invest in and innovate models for post-consumer recycled materials and improve recyclability through our modular design.

Gold

Fairphone was the first electronics company to source gold from Fairtrade-certified artisanal mines. These mines have improved working conditions and receive a premium for the gold they produce. We integrated this gold into the Fairphone 3’s PCB supply chain.

To increase the supply of responsible gold, we’re also currently working with partners in the Great Lake Region in Africa to improve the working conditions at artisanal mine sites, prevent child labor, and create a transparent and traceable supply chain.

Cobalt

We co-founded the Fair Cobalt Alliance, an action platform focusing on improving the livelihoods and working conditions of artisanal cobalt miners and their communities in the DRC. This isn’t just about thought leadership – we’re an action-oriented group that drives impact by investing directly in building capacity and empowering the people working in the mines, as well as those living in the surrounding communities. We piloted the integration of Fair cobalt from the DRC in our Fairphone 3+ battery.

We’re also working with Closing the Loop to recycle cobalt from phone batteries collected in Africa.