Life Cycle Based Greenhouse Gas Footprint Assessment of a Smartphone

Abstract

A life cycle assessment (LCA) technique has been used to evaluate the greenhouse gas impact of a smartphone. Smartphones are becoming popular due to the advancement in technology, improved connectivity, and cheaper prices. The production of smartphones on a mass scale has an impact on the environment. A Fairphone 1 from Fairphone enterprise has been chosen for this study as the company is trying to promote sustainability and phones with lower environmental impact. Different life cycle stages are chosen for the study, such as production, assembly, transportation, and end-of-life waste treatment. The use phase was excluded from this study for the sake of simplicity. The goal and scope are defined for the study, and the environmental effect is assessed using the Recipe 2016 method. The climate change impact category has been chosen for the study since it is a relatively well-known impact. The impact assessment results show that most of the contribution to the overall impact is due to the production phase (62%) followed by transportation (27%). The relative contribution of the production of the components is also represented, and it shows that the most likely impact is from the production of Printed Circuit boards (PCBs).