Ethical phones?

An oxymoron for sure. Ethical phone don’t exist, and probably never will hopefully one day will.

It is fairly common knowledge that the materials used in phones and laptops come from the DRC, and are fuelling a war which has killed 5 million people.

Then they are assembled in China, where the workers are underpaid and in shitty conditions.

Every time we buy technology we have blood on our hands. It is amazing therefore, that given the rise in other fairtrade products, the ethical phone does not yet exist.

Anyway, the reason why I am writing about all of this is that I have just bought an iPhone. Gasp! I know, I’m just another apple sell-out, joining the ranks of the pretentious and the snobby, with their shiny macbook pros and iphones, and all the elitism that comes with it.

But I’m not going to talk about the iPhone vs Android debate, apple vs Microsoft or whatever. As far as I know, they are all as unethical as each other, and as far as lives are being destroyed, I don’t believe slim margins of ethical-ness would make a difference anyway.

I chose to get an iPhone because my old phone was dying, and I needed a new one. Sure, I could have got another cheap nokia, but I wanted an iPhone and all the features that came with it, so that I can fuel my FB addiction, surf the internet at will, and take photos. Yes I could have got an Android for a lower price, but I happen to like apple’s products, they work well and are user friendly, and I don’t see anything wrong with that preference.

My interest is more in whether it can be considered more ethical to buy second hand than new. I got a second-hand iPhone in part because it was slightly cheaper, but also because intuitively, it felt somehow less harmful. That’s what all my friends said, and, somehow it just seems to make sense, right? Buying second hand, you’re not fuelling the demand that leads to all the shitty things associated with new phones.

But then I thought about it, and realised that maybe, if perfectly good phones are selling for good prices on trademe (like, only 200 bucks or so less than they cost new), doesn’t that just encourage people to keep buying new ones when they come out, thereby increasing consumer demand and all the harm that comes with it?

I was talking to a friend about it, and she suggested that actually, most of those people would probably buy a new one anyway, and if they didn’t sell their old one, they’d just chuck it away, which would be worse because then it wouldn’t be in use for as long so would be more wasteful.

I’m not sure how convinced I am of this. I think if there was less demand, they’d just sell it for a lower price. Maybe if the price was lower, they’d be less tempted to buy a new phone every two years, as it would be less economically viable. But then there’d be more people buying new phones anyway, cos the people who weren’t buying second hand ones would be buying new ones instead.

The point is, I’m yet to convince myself that buying a second hand phone is actually more ethical. Maybe its slightly the lesser of two evils, but I’m not so sure.

And then I realised, that maybe I should just accept that buying an iPhone was a purely selfish, consumerist decision, made by me, but also by the marketing gurus at Apple, and by our egocentric capitalist society. Maybe I should just accept that there is no way of making it an ethical choice, and that to convince myself otherwise would be self-indulgent delusion.

So I have stopped trying to justify to myself something inherently unethical. Instead, every time I use my phone, I will be reminded of the 5 million people dead, and 300,000 women who have been raped in a pointless war that exists only to fuel our greedy consumption (and our colonial attitudes). I will be reminded of the countless nameless and faceless Chinese workers, forced into factories by a world economy which commodifies so many people to fuel the interests of a few.

I accept this is a situation that I can’t do much about by changing my consumer behaviour. But I can be inspired to stand up, to fight against this cruel global system, and to seek a global economy which treats all humans with dignity, respect and compassion. To be reminded of that on a daily basis every time I check facebook or txt a friend is probably a good thing.