Modular mobile devices for less electronic waste

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Smartphones are indispensable in modern life, but their production and usage harm the environment. Engineers at Fraunhofer IZM aimed to reconcile technology and a circular economy. They unveiled two attractive designs for durable, recyclable smartphones, addressing this eco-challenge.

www.elektroniknet.de/, Oct. 24, 2023 – 

It seems that the next generation of smartphones is always around the corner, waiting to replace devices that are still perfectly functional and artificially shrinking the working lives of smartphones everywhere. Studies show that European users tend to use their mobile phones for longer than before, but the average lifespan is still nowhere near the real life expectancy of the devices.

Apart from putting enormous...

...competitive pressure on manufacturers, this only adds to the flood of electronic waster, with dramatic consequences for the environment: In Germany, smartphones alone account for around 1.7 million metric tons of electronic waste. To stem that tide, the European Union decided to launch an action plan for a circular economy in 2020, with the express mission to reduce the amount of e-waste.

The circular economy...

...is also the fundamental concept underpinning the MoDeSt project: It tries to understand how the lifespan of smartphones can be extended and how modularity can be achieved, both technologically and commercially. Put simply: It is about making longer-lasting, repairable, and recyclable phones without compromising on their functions.

The project revolves...

...around the circular toolkit developed and made available to the public by Fraunhofer IZM. With that toolkit, the two industrial designers Tapani Jokinen and Robin Hoske dared to reimagine what smartphones should look like. They came up with two completely revolutionary designs. The initial design, the MODEST CUBE, was made from 100% recycled PCR plastic, and was created with the intention to make the device as repairable as possible. This made the MODEST CUBE vivid proof of how product lifecycles could be extended if hardware can be replaced quickly and without fuss. This is modularity writ large and not limited to individual modules.

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