Speaker 1: Welcome to tech stuff, a production from I heart radio.
Speaker 1: Hey there, and welcome to tech stuff. I'm your host,
Speaker 1: Jonathan Strickland. I'm an executive producer with I heart radio,
Speaker 1: and how the Tech Are you? Recently I was invited
Speaker 1: to speak on the radio about the fair phone four,
Speaker 1: which is the latest smartphone from fair phone, and in
Speaker 1: the process I realized that this company and this line
Speaker 1: of products really opens up the opportunity to talk about
Speaker 1: a lot of serious issues in tech, issues that the
Speaker 1: fair phone looks to try and avoid and to bring
Speaker 1: attention to. So these are issues like the ethical sourcing
Speaker 1: of materials and labor, sustainability and e waste and also
Speaker 1: repair ability. So I figured today we're gonna talk about
Speaker 1: the fair phone four only a little bit, and how
Speaker 1: it opens the door to talk about these issues in
Speaker 1: tech and why they're important and why they're really complicated.
Speaker 1: And I could have started, you know, anywhere, but I
Speaker 1: decided to tackle those in order that I mentioned them.
Speaker 1: So I'M gonna start off with ethical sourcing. It is
Speaker 1: very easy for us to be reductive in our thinking
Speaker 1: when we look at any particular electronic device. Consider your
Speaker 1: typical smartphone. In fact, let's be specific. Let's say that
Speaker 1: we're talking about an iphone. Now I'm going to add
Speaker 1: that apple has, on and off, done some serious work
Speaker 1: to try and make ethical choices when it comes to
Speaker 1: the manufacturing of its devices, particularly in the wake of
Speaker 1: scrutiny that was directed toward apple because there were some
Speaker 1: very high profile tragedies, like worker depths in China related
Speaker 1: to apple production. Um, the company has not maintained a
Speaker 1: stellar record like I'll talk about a bit more later,
Speaker 1: but anyway, apple at least has been in the public
Speaker 1: eye for this issue and when you look at an Iphone,
Speaker 1: you might think, oh well, this just this came from apple,
Speaker 1: but of course the truth of the matter is that
Speaker 1: it gets far more complex than that. I think there's
Speaker 1: a great way to kind of illustrate this. There's a
Speaker 1: song that's called the guns song and it comes from
Speaker 1: Stephen Sondheim's musical assassins. The musical is about the various
Speaker 1: people who assassinated or attempted to assassinate a U S
Speaker 1: president over the course of the history of the United States. Now,
Speaker 1: the character singing this part of the guns song in
Speaker 1: question is Leon Frank Chol Gas, who assassinated President Mckinley
Speaker 1: on September six, N one and Chol Gas sings. Quote.
Speaker 1: It takes a lot of men to make a gun.
Speaker 1: Hundreds many men to make a gun. Men in the
Speaker 1: minds to dig the iron, men in the mills to
Speaker 1: forge the steel, minute machines to turn the barrel, mold
Speaker 1: the trigger, shape the wheel. It takes a lot of
Speaker 1: men to make a gun. One Gun. End. Quote, and
Speaker 1: Hill Gods is right. He's pointing out that this one
Speaker 1: thing that someone can hold and they can own and
Speaker 1: they can use is actually the product of work from
Speaker 1: hundreds of people. Also, at the end of the song
Speaker 1: he makes it a point to say that this production,
Speaker 1: this manufacturing process, can cost many lives before the gun
Speaker 1: is ever fired. In other words, this gun effectively killed
Speaker 1: people even though it hadn't even been fully built yet,
Speaker 1: because people had died in the making of it. Well,
Speaker 1: the same thing, tragically, is true with our electronics. Our
Speaker 1: devices don't magically come out of a big building that
Speaker 1: has computer factory or smartphone manufacturing facility on the side.
Speaker 1: Our electronics are the product of many, many steps in
Speaker 1: a complicated and interconnected supply chain. We saw how dangerous
Speaker 1: the supply chain can be when it was disrupted and
Speaker 1: continues to be disrupted in the wake of the pandemic,
Speaker 1: and it brought a lot more attention to it, but
Speaker 1: it's attention more to how it inconveniences us or how
Speaker 1: it affects businesses less so about the conditions going on
Speaker 1: at various points of the supply chain. And there are
Speaker 1: many points in that chain where there are big, troubling problems.
Speaker 1: Let's start with raw materials. So our devices rely on
Speaker 1: some materials that we think of as being pretty scarce.
Speaker 1: We call them rare earth elements. Sometimes you will hear
Speaker 1: rare earth minerals or rare earth metals. We frequently will
Speaker 1: say rare earth elements just to kind of lump them
Speaker 1: all into one category. Now, that's a bit of a misnomer. Actually,
Speaker 1: they're not that rare. It's just it's very hard to
Speaker 1: find a lot of those material eels in a single place. Uh,
Speaker 1: it's that you know, you you don't find veins of
Speaker 1: ore of these rare earth elements. You can't just dig
Speaker 1: and say, Oh, I found a vein of whatever. So
Speaker 1: instead what you have to do is gather up huge
Speaker 1: clumps of earth and stone, minerals, and you have to
Speaker 1: treat it so that you can separate the rare earth
Speaker 1: elements from that Earth. So you've got to displace a ton,
Speaker 1: literally literally tons, of earth and then treat it in
Speaker 1: order to get at the stuff that we need in
Speaker 1: order to have them incorporated into our electronics and make
Speaker 1: them work. Now, if we were lied on places in
Speaker 1: the world that maintained strict controls when it comes to
Speaker 1: how you can treat workers and how you protect the
Speaker 1: environment in the process of your operations, that amount of
Speaker 1: effort and attention would end up translating into higher costs
Speaker 1: and manufacturing. So, for example, we might identify a region
Speaker 1: in the United States that could be ideal for mining
Speaker 1: certain rare earth elements that we would use for electronics.
Speaker 1: But if we did that, any operation would have to
Speaker 1: follow these strict rules, because that's the law in the
Speaker 1: United States, and those rules would cover stuff like the
Speaker 1: environmental impact of the operations. A lot of mining operations
Speaker 1: use explosives to blast out deep pits and they also
Speaker 1: tend to rely on enormous pools filled with toxic chemicals,
Speaker 1: and those chemicals leach out the stuff you want from
Speaker 1: everything else and then you dump everything else into a
Speaker 1: waste pit, or sometimes you might just have the toxic
Speaker 1: pool become the waste pit over time. So you essentially
Speaker 1: create enormous amounts of soil and rocks that you dump
Speaker 1: into these toxic pools. You let the chemicals do their
Speaker 1: work and extract the stuff that's in these teeny tiny
Speaker 1: concentrations within this massive earth and then you generate an
Speaker 1: enormous amount of spoil and this is the product of
Speaker 1: your mining. Now that toxic pool is obviously hazardous for
Speaker 1: the environment. We're talking about chemicals that can cause direct
Speaker 1: harm if you're exposed to them, or long term harm
Speaker 1: if it gets into things like the water supply. It's
Speaker 1: also obviously hazardous for the people who are working at
Speaker 1: these operations. Now a lot of this particular kind of
Speaker 1: work happens in China, which has a terrible human rights record.
Speaker 1: There is a mine in the Mongolia region of China
Speaker 1: where more than of all the rare earth elements mind
Speaker 1: in the country comes from. So out of all of China,
Speaker 1: one mind accounts for more than of all rare earth
Speaker 1: elements taken out of that country. It's called the by
Speaker 1: an oboe mine. It represents more than the total known
Speaker 1: earth rare earth elements in the world and almost half
Speaker 1: of all the rare earth elements that we need come
Speaker 1: from this one mine. It's been an operation as a
Speaker 1: rare earth elements mine since nine before that it was
Speaker 1: an iron mine. Anyway, this extraction process leaves behind lots
Speaker 1: of waste. There's toxic wastewater which is filled with stuff
Speaker 1: like heavy metals and radioactive materials and other dangerous stuff.
Speaker 1: If that water does get into the water supply, then
Speaker 1: you're looking at a really hazardous situation for all the
Speaker 1: people within that region who access that water table. It's
Speaker 1: not unusual in areas around these kinds of operations to
Speaker 1: see an increase in cancer rates for the populations in
Speaker 1: that region. Uh, it is possible to mine rare earth
Speaker 1: elements more responsibly, but that takes more time, takes more effort.
Speaker 1: Thus it's more expensive, and so you have to first
Speaker 1: work in a place that takes these things seriously. China
Speaker 1: is not one of those places and a place that
Speaker 1: doesn't treat workers as expendable. And for the record, there
Speaker 1: are rare earth element reserves in other parts of the world,
Speaker 1: like the United States, really does have some rare earth
Speaker 1: element deposits, but because of those strict rules about limiting
Speaker 1: environmental damage and mitigating the risk to human populations, including
Speaker 1: the workforce, you don't see them. Those operations happen because
Speaker 1: it would be way more expensive. That would either cut
Speaker 1: into the profits of the electronics companies or, more likely,
Speaker 1: result in an increase price to the consumer, or maybe
Speaker 1: both of those things. Anyway, that's just one part of
Speaker 1: the supply chain, the mining process that has a dark side.
Speaker 1: And there are other mining operations that also have a
Speaker 1: truly disturbing dark side. One of those happens in Africa,
Speaker 1: specifically in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, or the
Speaker 1: D R C, and Y'all, I'm gonna warn you this
Speaker 1: gets grim now. The first thing you have to understand
Speaker 1: is that the D R C has had an incredibly
Speaker 1: violent and chaotic past due to things like colonialism, civil war,
Speaker 1: war in nearby nations, rampant government corruption and even more
Speaker 1: rampant exploitation of the natives of the region, and I
Speaker 1: do think it's important to understand at least a very
Speaker 1: quick history of the D R C to get a
Speaker 1: context for, as you know, as far as how the
Speaker 1: rest of the world helps perpetuate an ongoing crisis within
Speaker 1: this country. So let's get a quick rundown of its history,
Speaker 1: and I stress this is the barest bones. I am
Speaker 1: not doing any justice to the Democratic Republic of the
Speaker 1: Congo with this quick history, but I to kind of
Speaker 1: paint a picture of the plight of the people in
Speaker 1: this in this country. So much has happened there, but
Speaker 1: generally speaking, the native peoples of the Democratic Republic of
Speaker 1: the Congo have been the subject of abuse and exploitation
Speaker 1: for about a hundred fifty years. At first it was
Speaker 1: King Leopold of Belgium. He claimed the entire region as
Speaker 1: his own personal property and he sent agents there to
Speaker 1: oversee operations that forced locals to work in the rubber
Speaker 1: trade or they risked losing life and limb. Literally, there
Speaker 1: was a practice for a while where if someone was
Speaker 1: resisting the authority of the king, that person might get
Speaker 1: their arm lopped off, absolutely brutal. Then in the early
Speaker 1: twentieth century, under intense international pressure, King Leopold would hand
Speaker 1: over the control of the region to the Belgian parliament.
Speaker 1: This is where the region became known as the Belgian Congo,
Speaker 1: and at that point very large companies mostly Belgian companies
Speaker 1: replaced Leopold's agents, but the people of the region were
Speaker 1: still oppressed and exploited. It's just now they were exploited
Speaker 1: by these companies as opposed to the king's representatives. Over time,
Speaker 1: folks discovered there were other valuable resources besides rubber in
Speaker 1: the region that would eventually become the D R c.
Speaker 1: There was copper, for example. Later on they discovered uranium there.
Speaker 1: So as the atomic age advanced, countries like the then
Speaker 1: Soviet Union and the United States became very interested in
Speaker 1: the region, and both the USSR and the USA, as
Speaker 1: well as several other first world nations, would start to
Speaker 1: interfere in the region. Some sides would shore up rebel
Speaker 1: forces UH and some sides would shore up dictators. The
Speaker 1: United States supported dictators because the so union was funding
Speaker 1: rebel forces, and it was all in an effort to
Speaker 1: secure access to those resources. You don't kid yourself in
Speaker 1: thinking that either the USSR or the United States were
Speaker 1: really concerned for the people in the region. They were
Speaker 1: concerned for those resources and they would take whatever means
Speaker 1: necessary in order to make sure the other side couldn't
Speaker 1: get it. Meanwhile, the people of the nation continued to
Speaker 1: Labor under inhumane conditions. Now the region gained independence in
Speaker 1: nineteen sixty because Belgium realized that it was not going
Speaker 1: to be able to keep a lid on things much longer.
Speaker 1: There was a growing sense of independence in the country.
Speaker 1: Belgium did not have the resources to be able to
Speaker 1: suppress that, so there was a move to become a democratic,
Speaker 1: independent nation in nineteen sixty. But this opened up opportunities
Speaker 1: for other countries to try and install leaders within the
Speaker 1: Congo that would be more in client to trade with
Speaker 1: one side versus the other, uh and ultimately it gave
Speaker 1: a man named Mobutu the chance to declare himself president
Speaker 1: of the country in nineteen sixty five. Mobutu was incredibly corrupt.
Speaker 1: You could say he was using a lot of the
Speaker 1: same tactics as King Leopold and those large companies from
Speaker 1: decades earlier, and he was embezzling tons of money in
Speaker 1: order to fund his own private wealth. Things would get
Speaker 1: even more complicated over the following decades. By the nineteen nineties,
Speaker 1: there was a civil war in neighboring Rwanda and a
Speaker 1: genocide in Rwanda, and that ended up leading to conflict
Speaker 1: in what would be the D R C at this
Speaker 1: point in history. It was not the DRC yet. They
Speaker 1: had gone from the Belgian Congo to becoming the Republic
Speaker 1: of Zaire under Mobutu. And you know, Mo Bout was
Speaker 1: essentially a dictator who was calling himself a president, someone
Speaker 1: who was running unopposed an election after election, and the
Speaker 1: incredible pressure from the civil war forced him to flee
Speaker 1: the nation. But things did not necessarily get better from there.
Speaker 1: I'll talk about it more when we come back after
Speaker 1: this quick break. We're back, all right. We left off
Speaker 1: with Mobutu fleeing what was then called the Republic of Zaire,
Speaker 1: and the new leaders of the Congo renamed it the
Speaker 1: Democratic Republic of the Congo. So that's where we get
Speaker 1: its current name. This is a nation that has gone
Speaker 1: under many names over its history, but the corruption within
Speaker 1: the region at all levels of government and business, ran
Speaker 1: super deep. It's not like everything magically got better once
Speaker 1: Mobu too was deposed, essentially. And there were pockets in
Speaker 1: the DRC where military rebels were relying on forced labor
Speaker 1: are including child labor, to mine for materials like copper
Speaker 1: and then later cobalt. Cobalt is incredibly useful in electronics.
Speaker 1: That's where we're really going to focus for the rest
Speaker 1: of this conversation. So the armed rebels would sell these
Speaker 1: raw materials to buyers, essentially manufacturing companies, and then they
Speaker 1: would use the money they made from selling the raw
Speaker 1: materials to buy weapons and to try and gain more
Speaker 1: control over their various territories. All right, it gets worse.
Speaker 1: The fact that the D R C sits on top
Speaker 1: of deposits of valuable resources means that there's an ongoing
Speaker 1: pressure from the rest of the world to get access
Speaker 1: to those raw materials way of the list. On of
Speaker 1: those nations is China. In fact, there are a handful
Speaker 1: of Chinese mining companies that have exclusive rights to specific
Speaker 1: areas within the DRC to mine for cobalt in particular. So,
Speaker 1: like I said, cobalts used in a lot of stuff,
Speaker 1: including many types of lithium batteries, and our electronics rely
Speaker 1: on batteries. We know that there's an increased dependence upon batteries.
Speaker 1: In fact, if we want to have a future where
Speaker 1: electric vehicles replace internal combustion engine vehicles, we're gonna need
Speaker 1: a lot more batteries. So you've got these areas within
Speaker 1: the D R C where Chinese companies are overseeing dangerous
Speaker 1: mining operations and effectively are in control of those regions
Speaker 1: within the D R C. Like you have Chinese companies
Speaker 1: that are essentially ruling parts of the Democratic Republic of
Speaker 1: the Congo. So you've also got these impoverished communities within
Speaker 1: the D R C that are attempting to get at
Speaker 1: least a little autonomy to be able to profit from
Speaker 1: their own resources. People who live on land and that
Speaker 1: they discover that they have cobalt on their land, they
Speaker 1: often find themselves forced off and incapable of profiting off
Speaker 1: their own property. This can actually escalate in to brutal
Speaker 1: confrontations with armed police and military. There's a twenty one
Speaker 1: piece in the New Yorker that's titled the Dark Side
Speaker 1: of Congo's cobalt rush and I urge you to read it. Uh,
Speaker 1: the piece goes into a lot more detail on the
Speaker 1: stuff I'm talking about, but essentially, the people of the
Speaker 1: D R C have had very little agency for multiple generations.
Speaker 1: There are entire towns that have been uprooted and forced
Speaker 1: to move, with people scattering all over the place as
Speaker 1: a Chinese mining operation has swooped in to demolish houses
Speaker 1: and turn what was once a town into just a
Speaker 1: bunch of minds. And there's a lack of safety precautions
Speaker 1: in these mining operations, which means the actual people doing
Speaker 1: the mining, many of them children, face life threatening situations regularly,
Speaker 1: and the presence of armed police and military, who are
Speaker 1: essentially paid off by the Chinese to keep things in line,
Speaker 1: will often mean that you run the risk of being
Speaker 1: beaten for any kind of resistance to the normal process
Speaker 1: of operations. And, like I said, there's this ongoing issue
Speaker 1: of child labor in the region. It's something that has
Speaker 1: gained global attention and occasionally you see companies do something
Speaker 1: about it, like Apple. Apple has now and again attempted
Speaker 1: to address this problem, though the article in The New
Speaker 1: Yorker specifically alleges that apple pretty much abandoned any attempts
Speaker 1: to be serious about that once the heat was off
Speaker 1: the company. So you know, they made an effort for
Speaker 1: a while and then, when people stop paying attention, they
Speaker 1: just went back to the old old way. So the
Speaker 1: human cost is very high. And keep in mind so
Speaker 1: far we're only talking about raw materials. Let's also talk
Speaker 1: about the manufacturing process. See, when we move up the
Speaker 1: supply chain, then we have to talk about taking raw
Speaker 1: materials and turning them into components that will later get
Speaker 1: assembled into finished products. Now, some of these steps happen
Speaker 1: in places where things aren't too rough, but ultimately it
Speaker 1: all goes back to places like China. While your major
Speaker 1: tech companies aren't reliant upon mainland China for microprocessors, because
Speaker 1: that honor tends to go to Taiwan. Taiwan is off
Speaker 1: the coast of China and it is independent of the mainland,
Speaker 1: though mainland China disputes that point. But you know, if
Speaker 1: you're talking about assembly and packaging, then that's all out
Speaker 1: of China. In fact, these processes usually take place in
Speaker 1: different facilities hundreds or thousands of miles apart. So you're
Speaker 1: shipping stuff all over Asia just for it to become
Speaker 1: a finished product. You know, it kind of gets back
Speaker 1: to that song from assassins it takes a lot of
Speaker 1: men to make a gun. In this case, your iphone
Speaker 1: has traveled the world in some ways before it ever
Speaker 1: got to you. Anyway, according to researchers like Henry Young
Speaker 1: of the National University of Singapore, more than half of
Speaker 1: the world's electronics are at some point going through a
Speaker 1: process of manufacturing within China, and the country has a
Speaker 1: reputation for very harsh working conditions, which includes unreasonable punishments
Speaker 1: for even minor offenses. And it was so bad that
Speaker 1: the economic rights institute looked into more than a hundred
Speaker 1: fifty cases between ten and which workers at these kinds
Speaker 1: of facilities committed or attempted to commit suicide. The researchers
Speaker 1: found that low wages, anxiety over job security, a massive
Speaker 1: turnover problem and harsh punishments, as well as a feeling
Speaker 1: that no one in the managerial capacity ever even gave
Speaker 1: a crap about them, all contributed to folks having such
Speaker 1: despondents that they considered suicide. Now this became global news
Speaker 1: when there were actually a string of suicides, more than
Speaker 1: a dozen of them, and a manufacturing company called Fox
Speaker 1: con in and sadly, the reason the world really took
Speaker 1: notice is because Fox con is one of Apple's big suppliers.
Speaker 1: It's part of Apple's supply chain. If it hadn't been
Speaker 1: for that connection to apple, I would wager that those
Speaker 1: depths would not have received much coverage outside of China.
Speaker 1: Probably not that much inside of China, and that is
Speaker 1: absolutely unthinkable to me, but it's the it's the truth. Now,
Speaker 1: over the last decade, wages for workers in these facilities
Speaker 1: has slowly improved. The low wages have gotten better over
Speaker 1: the last several years, which has raised the cost of
Speaker 1: doing business in China. So it's a little more expensive
Speaker 1: to have your manufacturing processes operate in China because they're
Speaker 1: paying people more, but because China has such a well
Speaker 1: developed manufacturing infrastructure means it's still the main choice over
Speaker 1: alternatives like Vietnam and India, where you know the Labor
Speaker 1: could be a lot cheaper. Again, you get into real
Speaker 1: problems with all this. But the reason why companies aren't
Speaker 1: necessarily flocking to Vietnam and India for all of their manufacturing.
Speaker 1: Some of them are dipping their toe in that, but
Speaker 1: the reason they're not rushing to it is that these
Speaker 1: these countries have a lack of infrastructure when you compare
Speaker 1: it to China. So there's this kind of balancing act
Speaker 1: that companies are doing, saying well, well, well, we'll continue
Speaker 1: to operate in China while we start to see manufacturing
Speaker 1: infrastructure built out in other nations where we might be
Speaker 1: able to exploit cheaper labor so that our our costs
Speaker 1: come down. But yeah, that's the main reason that the
Speaker 1: world turned to China in the first place. It's because
Speaker 1: the labor costs were so low that it kept the
Speaker 1: overall cost of manufacturing down, and thus it could mean that,
Speaker 1: you know, the consumer sees less expensive electronics. You know,
Speaker 1: they might still be pricey, but they're not as expensive
Speaker 1: as they would be if, you know, we were being
Speaker 1: better stewards of the environment and treating people as human beings. So, yeah,
Speaker 1: it comes at the cost of a lot of lives
Speaker 1: along the way. Financially it might cost less, but the
Speaker 1: social cost is and the environmental cost is very high.
Speaker 1: All right, that's enough. I know that I get on
Speaker 1: a soapbox and it sounds like I'm preaching. We're gonna
Speaker 1: switch our thoughts over to sustainability and recycling. Still gonna
Speaker 1: be a little preachy. Apologized for that. It's just the
Speaker 1: way it works. So, as we've already covered, getting the
Speaker 1: raw materials for our electronics includes a lot of practices
Speaker 1: that are harmful not just to humans but also the environment.
Speaker 1: And meanwhile the Electronics Industry is built upon a practice
Speaker 1: of consume and replace. By that I mean we in
Speaker 1: the developed world our condition to replace our stuff on
Speaker 1: a regular basis. Um computers are they tend to last
Speaker 1: five to eight years if you've taken good care of them.
Speaker 1: That's assuming you don't need to upgrade to a more
Speaker 1: recent system. You know, frequently, like if you're a pro
Speaker 1: Gamer or something, you might be upgrading your system until
Speaker 1: the motherboard can't support anymore and then you swap it
Speaker 1: all out, and so you might be changing your rig
Speaker 1: fairly regularly. People like me, where I'm using a work
Speaker 1: computer to do some pretty light work, I can get
Speaker 1: away with using the same machine for several years in
Speaker 1: a row. But then with smartphones there's this push to
Speaker 1: upgrade every two years or less. You know, we get
Speaker 1: new models with new features every single year and they're
Speaker 1: marketed to us as being a big improvement over the
Speaker 1: stuff that came out the year before. The old contract
Speaker 1: systems that were with carriers here in the United States
Speaker 1: meant that you used to have the chance to renew
Speaker 1: your agreement, your agreement with whatever carrier you use, every
Speaker 1: two years and you would get a phone for a
Speaker 1: highly subsidized price. So the actual cost of the phone
Speaker 1: could be lower, even free, depending upon the plan. That's
Speaker 1: not as common these days. We don't see those subsidized
Speaker 1: phones as frequently in the United States as we used to,
Speaker 1: but it got people into the habit of thinking every
Speaker 1: two years or so that they needed a new phone.
Speaker 1: Some people it's even more frequently. They they want to
Speaker 1: get the newest model as soon as it comes out.
Speaker 1: But then what happens to all the old phones and computers?
Speaker 1: Like we've created this culture where we have manufactured the
Speaker 1: desire for new products. Well, the old products have to
Speaker 1: go somewhere. Right. Where do we put them? You know,
Speaker 1: you shouldn't just throw them away, although a lot of
Speaker 1: people do. Uh. For one thing, you might have some
Speaker 1: important information stored on there somewhere and you really need
Speaker 1: to make sure you've gone through and thoroughly, uh, formatted
Speaker 1: and deleted all that stuff so that someone doesn't come
Speaker 1: into possession of one of your old pieces of equipment
Speaker 1: and get access to information they should not be able
Speaker 1: to access. But for another thing, if the electronics still works,
Speaker 1: like if you have a smartphone you want to upgrade
Speaker 1: but your old smartphone still works. Well, you could donate
Speaker 1: your old smartphone to an organization that can make sure
Speaker 1: that someone who otherwise would not have that kind of
Speaker 1: a device can get it. If it's a device that
Speaker 1: doesn't work, it still contains valuable and, in some cases,
Speaker 1: toxic materials in it, and you know you don't want
Speaker 1: the toxic stuff to go into a landfill where it
Speaker 1: might leach out and contaminate the environment. That's obviously something
Speaker 1: that no one wants to have happened. And you don't
Speaker 1: want to waste the valuable stuff that's in your electronics either.
Speaker 1: Right like there's stuff in there that could be used again,
Speaker 1: even if the device itself is shot. There are components, there's,
Speaker 1: you know, copper, there's even gold. There are other things
Speaker 1: that are dangerous stuff too, like mercury and lead. So
Speaker 1: you don't go cracking into your old electronics hoping that
Speaker 1: you're gonna be panning for gold in them, but it
Speaker 1: would be a great idea to risk cycle the electronics
Speaker 1: in those cases in order to reclaim those valuable materials
Speaker 1: and use them again instead of them just going into
Speaker 1: a landfill. Now I will caution you, because the recycling
Speaker 1: process is also a complicated one. We've talked about it
Speaker 1: on this show before. There are some electronics recycling companies
Speaker 1: that just gather up enormous amounts of electronics. They pack
Speaker 1: cargo containers full of them, they ship them overseas, often
Speaker 1: to places like China, and the recycling operations, the reclamation operations,
Speaker 1: are actually very similar to how rare earth element minds
Speaker 1: end up separating the materials from Earth in the first place.
Speaker 1: They often rely on caustic, toxic chemicals to leach that
Speaker 1: stuff out of the electronics and thus be able to
Speaker 1: reclaim it, and those operations can put workers at risk.
Speaker 1: There are entire towns in China that became dangerous to
Speaker 1: live in due to the chemicals that were being used
Speaker 1: to pull valuable stuff out of old electronics. So even
Speaker 1: when you're trying to do the responsible thing with your
Speaker 1: old devices and recycle them, you can inadvertently participate in
Speaker 1: a system that exploits people and causes harm. There are
Speaker 1: ethical electronics recycling programs out there, but it takes some
Speaker 1: legwork to find them. Once you do, those old electronics
Speaker 1: can be processed and materials can be reclaimed to be
Speaker 1: used in future products. That's what the Fair Phone Company
Speaker 1: strives to do. So rather than source materials that come
Speaker 1: from places like the D R C, where it's far
Speaker 1: more likely that they came out of an operation that
Speaker 1: has a terrible disregard for the safety of its workforce.
Speaker 1: The stuff is coming from old electronics that no longer
Speaker 1: have a use. They're relying heavily on recycled materials in
Speaker 1: order to get access to those, those raw components. Now,
Speaker 1: reducing our reliance on new material boost sustainability and that's
Speaker 1: a huge benefit in the long run, at least on
Speaker 1: the environmental side. On the humanitarian side, things get awfully complicated,
Speaker 1: because what do you do about taking jobs away, like
Speaker 1: if you if you remove the demand for cobalt within
Speaker 1: the D R C and these Chinese companies all pull
Speaker 1: up stakes, what takes its place? Because you you have
Speaker 1: a region that has been unstable for generations, largely due
Speaker 1: to interference from other countries, and the answer to that
Speaker 1: is complicated and and I'm not sure anyone really has
Speaker 1: the right one. Like I don't know if there is
Speaker 1: a right answer. There are probably answers that have different
Speaker 1: degrees of wrongness to them. Okay, we're gonna take another
Speaker 1: quick break. When we come back we're going to talk
Speaker 1: about the third of those big topics that fair phone
Speaker 1: opens up, and that's repair ability. Now, anyone out there
Speaker 1: who has had an issue with their electronics, if especially
Speaker 1: if it's something like a smartphone, less so with computers,
Speaker 1: because computers, if you know what you're doing, you can
Speaker 1: frequently swap something out if something goes bad, like if
Speaker 1: your motherboard goes bad. It might be hard for you
Speaker 1: to to, you know, figure out that that's the problem,
Speaker 1: but you can change out a motherboard, assuming you get
Speaker 1: one that's compatible, that fits in your case and all
Speaker 1: that kind of stuff. Same thing for a CPU or
Speaker 1: a GPU or Ram, like all the different components. It's
Speaker 1: fairly straightforward to swap them out and replace them. In
Speaker 1: your standard desktop computer. Laptops are a different story. Those
Speaker 1: get closer into the problems that I'm going to talk about.
Speaker 1: When it comes to smartphones, it's very rare to come
Speaker 1: across a smartphone where it's easy, or even potentially possible
Speaker 1: for you to do a repair job yourself. That's because
Speaker 1: smartphone companies take great efforts to one cram all the
Speaker 1: components into as slim a form factor as possible, because
Speaker 1: that scene as being a value to the industry. Like
Speaker 1: you want to have a sleek, sexy, thin smartphone, so
Speaker 1: that ends up causing part of the issue. You might
Speaker 1: have to use glue, for example, to glue components into
Speaker 1: place so that it can fit into this very small
Speaker 1: form factor. Well, that makes it very difficult to access
Speaker 1: and replace or repair that particular piece if it's been
Speaker 1: glued to something else. Same thing with the actual case. Like,
Speaker 1: I don't know about you, but my phone I wouldn't
Speaker 1: be able to open it up to even access the internals.
Speaker 1: In the first place. It's essentially sealed shut. You might
Speaker 1: have to use something like a heat gun to weaken
Speaker 1: the glue that's holding the case together, but then you
Speaker 1: have to be super careful because if you you know,
Speaker 1: if you overheat your smartphone, you might fry the various
Speaker 1: components inside of it. You might need special pride bars
Speaker 1: in order to be able to open it up. And
Speaker 1: then once you get in and you look at the components,
Speaker 1: some of them might be fastened to the the circuit
Speaker 1: board or to the case itself using proprietary connectors, proprietary screws,
Speaker 1: which means you need a special tool to be able
Speaker 1: to unscrew them. Apple does this all the time, so
Speaker 1: it makes things much more difficult to do repairs on
Speaker 1: it's why? One of the reasons why is that companies
Speaker 1: like apple really like to have a closed ecosystem. So
Speaker 1: your device stops working, maybe you just end up buying
Speaker 1: a new device. That would be great for Apple. They
Speaker 1: would love that. But, failing that, maybe you have to
Speaker 1: take that device into an apple store where someone, an
Speaker 1: actual apple employee, will take the device off your hands
Speaker 1: and the repairs will be done by licensed apple agents
Speaker 1: who are doing all the work because they actually have
Speaker 1: the tools to access all these different parts and they
Speaker 1: have the individual parts as well, which, you know, most
Speaker 1: companies don't sell those. Most companies don't sell you a
Speaker 1: replacement for the various pieces that are inside the smartphone.
Speaker 1: So it makes it very hard to repair these things.
Speaker 1: Fair phone goes a different way. Fair phone takes a
Speaker 1: more modular approach and it uses standard screws and it
Speaker 1: doesn't glue stuff close. So you can open your fair
Speaker 1: phone phone, you can remove the battery and swap it
Speaker 1: out for a new one. Let's say that your battery
Speaker 1: life has started to suffer, that the battery is starting
Speaker 1: to to no longer hold as much of a charge
Speaker 1: you can actually with a fair phone. Change the battery out,
Speaker 1: put a new battery in Um and attach it screwed
Speaker 1: back into place, and then you're good to go. And
Speaker 1: maybe you send the old battery off to be recycled
Speaker 1: so that way it can continue this process Um. In fact,
Speaker 1: the fair phone, a couple of the fair phones, are
Speaker 1: the first smartphone devices to receive a ten from I
Speaker 1: fix it, which is a website that judges the repair
Speaker 1: ability of various uh electronic devices, and the easier it
Speaker 1: is to repair, the higher the score. Fair phone is
Speaker 1: the only smartphone out there that's got a ten, and
Speaker 1: that really shows you the approach of the company is
Speaker 1: made saying we want to make sure that our device
Speaker 1: will last you a long time, that if there is
Speaker 1: a problem, you can solve it. Check out the beat
Speaker 1: while the DJ revolves it, you just use the regular
Speaker 1: tools to access it and swap it out. You can
Speaker 1: actually buy the replacement components, you know. It's not like
Speaker 1: it's hidden somewhere where. You know they have complete control
Speaker 1: over supply chain that they don't allow anyone else to access.
Speaker 1: So it really does change the game, and higherly as
Speaker 1: far as reparability. This really falls in line with the
Speaker 1: philosophy of the right to repair movement, and so it
Speaker 1: is fundamentally different from the way most companies do their business,
Speaker 1: where it's it's not as easy, it's not as convenient
Speaker 1: and it takes away a revenue stream to allow people
Speaker 1: to make repairs to their own stuff. Now there is
Speaker 1: a massive trade off for all of these things that
Speaker 1: fair phone does. You know the fact that fair phone
Speaker 1: tries very hard to make sure that it is not
Speaker 1: engaged in operations that contribute to human suffering, that it's
Speaker 1: not working with companies that are exploiting workers by paying
Speaker 1: them criminally low wages and making them work ridiculously long hours,
Speaker 1: that it is a reparable device, that it's not something
Speaker 1: that's going to put increased strain on the environment because
Speaker 1: it's using more and more recycled materials. Two build these devices?
Speaker 1: That trade off? Well, they're two. One is that it's
Speaker 1: not nearly as advanced as your flagship smartphones on the market.
Speaker 1: Right if you take the fair phone, for the most
Speaker 1: recent one, and if you were to compare it to
Speaker 1: an iphone fourteen, the most recent iphone, the iphone Fourteen's
Speaker 1: specs blow the fair phone four out of the water.
Speaker 1: There's no questions, not even close. Now, granted, the fair
Speaker 1: phone four is cast is. It would cost around six
Speaker 1: D seventy bucks us if they sold them in the US,
Speaker 1: which they don't. But if we converted euro to two dollars,
Speaker 1: would be around six D seventy bucks, whereas an IPHONE,
Speaker 1: if you're getting a pro model, could be around a
Speaker 1: thousand thousand two hundred bucks, somewhere around there, depending on
Speaker 1: which model you're getting. So yes, less expensive than an IPHONE,
Speaker 1: but also far less powerful. If you actually compare the
Speaker 1: fair phone four against other smartphones that have a comparable
Speaker 1: set of capabilities, then the other phones cost, you know,
Speaker 1: half as much, or us like you might find a
Speaker 1: phone that costs a hundred, fifty or two hundred dollars
Speaker 1: that has the equivalent specs of the fair phone four,
Speaker 1: which costs six. That really shows you that if you
Speaker 1: want to go about things in an ethically responsible manner,
Speaker 1: there is a massive cost to that. It does cost
Speaker 1: a lot more money. It also really pulls back the
Speaker 1: curtain on how much money, quote unquote, you're saving by
Speaker 1: depending upon these systems that bring along with it these
Speaker 1: awful conditions for the people who are are in these operations.
Speaker 1: So you start asking yourself questions. Is it more valuable
Speaker 1: to you to be able to say the devices I use,
Speaker 1: I'm going to use them for as long as I
Speaker 1: possibly can and I want to make sure that they
Speaker 1: are ethically sourced and I don't mind paying more for them?
Speaker 1: Not everyone has that capability to I mean, I fully
Speaker 1: understand like there are a lot of consumers out there
Speaker 1: where paying more for the stuff they need is just
Speaker 1: not an option, particularly as we are on the brink
Speaker 1: of whatever economic calamity we're in right now, whether it's
Speaker 1: a recession or not. It's tough. Is a tough ask
Speaker 1: to go to someone and say hey, that device you
Speaker 1: want and or need is dependent upon unethical practices, so
Speaker 1: you need to pay more money for this thing that
Speaker 1: does less so that you're not contributing to human misery,
Speaker 1: and the other person says, I can't afford to do that.
Speaker 1: I mean, that's that's a tough argument to to go against. Right.
Speaker 1: So there are no easy solutions here, but being aware
Speaker 1: of the problem, I think, is absolutely important, like having
Speaker 1: that that knowledge of how this system works and what
Speaker 1: it is dependent upon is an important component because it
Speaker 1: might make you pause when you are about to purchase
Speaker 1: your next electronic gadget, to ask questions about this and
Speaker 1: to potentially hold companies accountable and to demand changes for
Speaker 1: people who aren't in a position to be able to
Speaker 1: argue for themselves. And I think ultimately that's the right
Speaker 1: thing to do. But it is, you know, a long game.
Speaker 1: It's very hard and it will come with the cost
Speaker 1: of things being more expensive over time. So it's not
Speaker 1: something that I think would ever happen immediately. I'll be
Speaker 1: amazed if it happens at all. But but I feel
Speaker 1: like it's something that we need to talk about to
Speaker 1: be able to at least acknowledge what's going on. To
Speaker 1: turn a blind eye to it and to pretend like
Speaker 1: these things aren't happening, I think is a massive injustice
Speaker 1: and I think we have to reckon with it. And
Speaker 1: I realized that the reason why a lot of this
Speaker 1: stuff never really makes the news that frequently is that
Speaker 1: it's happening in places that are so far away from us,
Speaker 1: especially I'm talking about here in the United States in particular.
Speaker 1: It's so far away from where we are that it's
Speaker 1: easy for us to just not think about it and
Speaker 1: not pay attention, because that might as well be a
Speaker 1: different world to a lot of us, and so it's
Speaker 1: so far away and the people are people we don't
Speaker 1: know and we have no connection to that it's easier
Speaker 1: for us to kind of shrug and set it aside
Speaker 1: and then go after the next shiny thing. But yeah,
Speaker 1: I love the fair phone for mission because, or the
Speaker 1: fair phone mission, I should say, just the whole company's
Speaker 1: mission because, like I said, it really does try to
Speaker 1: address some massive issues in the technology space, the hardware space,
Speaker 1: and I think that's commendable. Whether the device is one
Speaker 1: worth getting or not, I can't say they don't sell
Speaker 1: them in the US. I have never held one in
Speaker 1: my hand, but I think the mission is one that
Speaker 1: I really believe in and I would like to see
Speaker 1: that kind of extend over time and an effort be
Speaker 1: made to create a more humane and environmentally conscious approach
Speaker 1: toward producing our electronics, even if that means they're going
Speaker 1: to cost a bit more. All right, I know I
Speaker 1: rambled a lot and I went off on these things
Speaker 1: and maybe you have a fundamentally different point of view
Speaker 1: about this. Now. Maybe there are economic factors that you
Speaker 1: would argue for that. Again, it's hard to argue against them. If,
Speaker 1: if you argue this literally is the only way it
Speaker 1: can work, because if it went any other way, the
Speaker 1: companies would go to a business, then we're in another
Speaker 1: we're in another crisis. It's just a different kind of one.
Speaker 1: But that's my own point of view. If you have
Speaker 1: things that you would like me to talk about in
Speaker 1: future episodes of tech stuff, whether it's a specific technology,
Speaker 1: trend in tech, a personality and technology, anything like that,
Speaker 1: let me know. One Way to do that is to
Speaker 1: download the I heart radio APP, which is free to
Speaker 1: download and use, and you can navigate over to tech
Speaker 1: stuff just, you know, put text stuff in the little
Speaker 1: search field. It'll pop up you. Once you're over on
Speaker 1: tech stuff, you'll see that there's a little microphone icon.
Speaker 1: If you click on that, you can leave a voice
Speaker 1: message up to thirty seconds in length. Let me know
Speaker 1: what you would like me to talk about, or you
Speaker 1: can always leave me a message on twitter. The handle
Speaker 1: for the show is tech stuff, hs W and I'll
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