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In the lead-up to COP27, the GSMA has published a new, long-term vision for how the mobile industry can increase the circularity of its supply and production chains for mobile devices.

The GSMA’s Strategy Paper for Circular Economy: Mobile Devices lays out the following vision for the industry:

Devices with as long a lifetime as possible,
made with 100% recyclable and recycled content,
100% renewable energy,
and where no device ends up as waste

This ambition is backed up by a newly developed ‘circularity model’ for the mobile industry, which lays out the principles that operators should consider as they aim to build a circular supply and manufacturing chain by 2050, based on two overarching concepts of “maximised longevity” and “zero waste”.

Steven Moore, Head of Climate Action at GSMA and Mobile Sector Lead for the UN Climate Champions said: “The mobile industry is making real progress on circularity, but there’s a lot more to do to reduce the environmental impact of devices we rely on every day to stay connected. By setting out a new vision of systemic change for the sector, we’re laying the groundwork for the mobile industry to reduce material waste and increase the longevity of devices.”

Erik Wottrich, Head of Sustainability at Tele2 who led the development of the strategy paper said: “An increased circularity for devices has a huge potential to reduce negative environmental impact, and at the same time to enable new business models that can generate new business opportunities. This is a great step forward for us as an industry, but there is still much work to be done. Tele2 is proud to have led the development of the strategy paper as we are committed to advancing circular economy by developing new customer offerings based on a circular business model, which will be key for us to reduce our negative climate impact and to achieve our scope 3/value-chain science-based target.

Photo courtesy of lirneasia.