Mobile phone production to generate some 115m tonnes of CO2 by 2019 – report

10 Jun 2014

A new report conducted into CO2 emissions produced by mobile phone production has shown that by 2019, almost 115m tonnes is expected to contribute to greenhouse gases.

Entitled Green Mobile: The Complete Guide to Vendor Strategies & Future Prospects 2014-2019, and released by Juniper Research, this amount is equivalent to 60 years of flights from London Heathrow airport, or the annual emissions from 22.6m cars which will represent a significant increase of more than 30pc on this year’s figure.

However, the researchers behind the report noted mobile phone producers and vendors have made significant steps towards trying to discourage harm to the environment their production is causing, yet they have not prioritised environmental sustainability to the extent required to drive their suppliers into action.

These vendors, including some of the world’s most familiar brands, such as HTC, Apple and Samsung, have been found to be only directly responsible for less than 5pc of overall production emissions, but the report highlights the need to drive change across the whole value chain in order to achieve a significant net reduction across the whole industry.

The Juniper researchers identified the greatest reduction in greenhouse gases can be made through changing the production methods of the phone’s individual components.

Encouraging component makers to improve energy efficiency and adopt more renewable energy sources, mobile vendors could incentivise a potential 18.8 megatonne decrease in CO2 emissions.

Green mobile image via Shutterstock

Colm Gorey was a senior journalist with Silicon Republic

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