Smartphone technology paves the way for the market to adopt greener approaches. Encouraging greater use of mobile services helps to limit the need for multiple devices, extend the product lifecycle and offer consumers more ways of being green.

“Technology companies can never be green”. A casual comment dropped into conversation when discussing the idea of ‘green technology’. Of course, ‘green technology’ already exists in the form of multi-million pound, global scale projects that help reclaim water, produce renewable energy and generally help meet global climate change targets. Green technology, as it stands, does not mean the ‘greening’ of technology.

Making technology a little greener would mean creating a shift in the way that technology products – consumer ones that is – are used and consumed. My argument is  that the first steps to any greening of the consumer technology space would be lengthening the product lifecycle. Today, the very nature of the market tells a tale of rapid uptake and obsoleteness; parts break or newer, quicker, more innovative versions come along leaving many devices left for good old Mr. Landfill. Looking at the wider consumer landscape, which is successfully adopting greener behaviour, it seems like the right time for technology to adapt.

Despite the continuing efforts of manufacturers, it seems that we the consumer are still not recycling our old mobile phones.  Research by GfK NOP way back in 2007 first highlighted the problem of consumer lethargy but since then recent reports suggest there has been little improvement since.

An article by Telephony online for example, bemoans that:

“when a mobile phone reaches its end of life or, more likely, a consumer opts to upgrade, the three most common places for it to end up are a landfill, an incinerator or the consumer’s desk drawer.  Nokia’s own studies find that only about 3% of consumers are recycling their handsets today …there could be as many as one billion sitting in desks, consumers  aren’t spending the time or effort to seek out a recycling program.”

However, a collaboration between digital music website We7 and mobile recyclers Mopay may have identified a workable solution: Namely not relying on flaky consumer consciences and providing attractive incentives instead. We7 and Mopay’s new scheme enables visitors to mopay to swap unwanted phones for high quality MP3 files from We7’s download store to transfer to computers and portable music devices.  With some mobiles worth in excess of £180,  users can apparently turn the value of their old mobile phone into well over 200 downloads or around 30 albums. (Also, since We7 works in a similar vein to Spotify via ad-funded streaming, you will be able to listen to the music as much as  you want for free before selecting the tracks to take with you.)