Ecological Footprint Analysis Applied to Mobile Phones

Abstract

Ecological footprints (EF) have been used for more than 15 yr as an aggregate measure of sustainability of geographical regions, but also for certain products and activities. EF analysis measures the bioproductive areas required to produce resources such as crops and timber, the directly occupied areas for infrastructure, and areas for absorbing waste flows (mostly limited to carbon dioxide) in a given year for a defined population. The need to extend ecological footprint analysis to electronic products arose because so far, mobile phones have mainly been evaluated using life‐cycle assessments with a focus on toxicity, end‐of‐life management, and energy use, thus ignoring the wider sustainability implications. This article presents the footprint results from three mobile phone case studies. To establish the land areas consumed by the mined materials used in electronic products, a database was developed based on literature data and on approximations from the density and overburden of materials. The relationship between abundance and overburden values was used in a regression analysis to estimate energy requirements in materials extraction where other data were not available. Using a life‐cycle assessment approach, environmental burdens for producing and using a mobile phone were calculated and transformed into the instantaneous rate of resource consumption. Key results were that different electronic products have different ecological footprints and that the methodology proved sensitive enough to reveal differences in small electronic products and for monitoring technologies that use bioproductive space efficiently.

Sustainability of port activities within the framework of the fisheries sector: Port of Vigo (NW Spain)

“…The EF is an indicator that considers the energy and raw materials fluxes to and from any particular system, converting them into spaces of land or water necessary by nature for producing and/or assimilating these fluxes. Although EF was firstly developed to account for the consumption of natural resources depending on the lifestyle of nations and regions [10][11][12][13][14][15][16][17][18], improved methodologies allow the application of the EF to a wide variety of sectors and activities [19][20][21][22][23][24][25][26][27][28][29][30]. Pressure of nations on marine ecosystems has also been assessed by modified EF methodologies [6,[31][32][33].…”

Review of combined approaches and multi-criteria analysis for corporate environmental evaluation

“…This life cycle perspective has been used by different authors to perform EFs of products and processes, such as mobile phones (Frey et al, 2006), buildings (Bin and Parker, 2011) and the tourism industry (Castellani and Sala, 2011). Both methodologies (EF and LCA) have also been applied and compared in case studies of dairy production systems (Thomassen and Boer, 2005) and broiler feed production (de Alvarenga et al, 2011).…”

“…Small variations of EF/EI ratio due to that the use of land and use of fossil fuels are important drivers of overall environmental impact. Frey et al, 2006 Estimate the EF of mobile phones.…”

Life cycle assessments of consumer electronics — are they consistent?

“…Frey et al (2006) presented an ecological footprint analysis of a typical mobile phone weighing 90 grams. The study mentions a PEU distribution very similar to the Nokia (2005) study, but elsewhere, it is too abstract to be useful in the present context of benchmarking.…”