A call for green communications

MANILA, Philippines - Filipinos have had a long-standing love affair with their mobile phones.

As members of a social and open nation of 92 million people, Filipinos take to cellphones like fish to water. Today, about 94 percent of the country’s population, or 87 million people, subscribe to one or two mobile phone services. For many Filipinos, a day without their trusted device is a major loss.

But such a loss could be the environment’s gain, as the total carbon footprint from the use of mobile phones is significant, especially when multiplied by the total number of subscriptions around the world, which stands at five billion this year, according to the International Telecommunications Union.

A carbon footprint is the total amount of greenhouse gas emissions, like carbon dioxide, caused by a company, event, product or individual. Mobile phones don’t consume much power per se, but the carbon footprints from the materials needed to produce them and the process of manufacturing and shipping them to different markets worldwide, on top of the large energy requirements of cellular transmission towers, are major areas of concern.

Mike Berners-Lee, a leading British expert who specializes in organizational responses to climate change, says the energy required to transmit calls across the network per mobile phone emits 47kg of carbon dioxide per year.

This estimate breaks down as follows: base station, 23.1kg; administration, 7.1kg; manufacture, 6.3kg; switchboard, 5.6kg; phone energy, 3.2kg; and transport before sale, 1.6kg.

The actual footprint of mobile phone use by an individual, on the other hand, is largely determined by how often it is used. Berners-Lee says a minute’s mobile-to-mobile chatter comes in at 57g, while using a mobile phone for an hour each day totals 1,250kg or over a ton of carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions a year, which is equivalent to flying from London to New York on economy class.

Berners-Lee also cites another estimate that puts greenhouse gas emissions caused by manufacturing the phone itself to 16kg of CO2, which rises to 22kg when the phone’s power consumption for two years is factored in.

The author of “How Bad Are Bananas? The Carbon Footprint of Everything,” Berners-Lee says regular mobile phone use contributes a lot to an individual’s carbon footprint.

Filipino mobile users, who sleep and eat with their mobile phones and can’t be expected to use them for only an hour a day, are therefore generating a lot of greenhouse gases simply by leading a so-called connected lifestyle.

Applying Berners-Lee’s computation, each of the 87 million Filipino mobile owners accounts for about 15 tons of CO2 emissions yearly, assuming they use their phones during their waking hours, say, from 7 a.m. to 10 p.m. The number could even double or triple as it has become natural for many Filipinos to simultaneously use up to three mobile handsets on any given day.

In his book, Berners-Lee says there are an estimated 125 million tons of CO2 emissions from global mobile calls from the 2.7 billion mobiles in use in 2009. Clearly, Filipino cellphone fanatics are contributing to that number in a big way.

Although pundits such as Berners-Lee admit that footprint estimates are not 100 percent accurate, it is clear that our modern way of communicating with each other has a tremendous impact on the environment.

If we must use our cellphones, we are better off sending text messages that require less energy to transmit than mobile-to-mobile voice calls, Berners-Lee says.

Going green

Aware that cellphones cause some environmental problems, key stakeholders are looking at green communication solutions that will not only improve their businesses’ environmental credentials, but also bring in real and business benefits in terms of bigger market share and improved customer loyalty.

By going green, telecommunications operators could realize double-digit percentage cost reductions in power consumption and product waste cost savings, according to Insight Research Corp., a New Jersey-based market research company.

Between 2008 and 2013, global spending on green communications is expected to reach a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 34 percent, while total subscribers to green communications solutions are projected to increase at a CAGR of 36 percent, or three billion subscribers. By 2013, Insight Research also sees revenues from environmentally conscious businesses and consumers to account for $257 billion out of the expected $1.2 trillion industry revenue worldwide.

Another research company, Colorado-based Pike Research, which specializes in market intelligence related to clean technology, forecasts that by 2014 almost five percent of the world’s mobile base stations will be powered by renewable energy as fixed and mobile telecommunications network operators ramp up their efforts to use more energy-efficient infrastructure in addition to renewable power sources.

Phone recycling

Meanwhile, the volume of obsolete and toxic electronics equipment, including mobile phones, that enter the world’s landfills continues to rise and is expected to peak at 73 million metric tons by 2015, according to Pike Research. Its researchers also determined that every average consumer usually has 2.8 pieces of unused, broken or obsolete electronic equipment that create the environmental blight and global problem called e-waste.

However, there is also rising awareness of the benefits of recycling, thanks to      snowballing government and private sector initiatives around the world targeted to curb e-waste. Pike Research hopes such efforts will turn the tide toward the significant decline of e-waste volumes worldwide by 2016.

“The consumer is an integral link in the chain for electronics recycling and e-waste management,” says Pike Research managing director Clint Wheelock. “In order for the industry to achieve its goals, consumer values, attitudes, and behavior will need to support responsible handling of end-of-life electronics equipment. Popular sentiment is also essential to support the political will of governments as they strive to mitigate e-waste issues through legislation and regulation.”

Today, leading electronics manufacturers and service providers such as Cisco, Dell, HP, Motorola, Nokia, Research In Motion, Sprint Nextel, and Vodafone have successful recycling and other forms of environmental programs. However, Wheelock says more effective government and private sector initiatives and coordination on an international level are still needed to win the war against e-waste as the electronics supply chain, in general, is still full of holes and subject to abuse.

Going green also means not always buying a new mobile phone and junking an old unit that is still working. This, of course, is a hard sell to consumers, who are attracted to the latest models, and manufacturers, whose business is to make people buy new phones.

Green advocates say, however, that one can buy a new phone and still get on with the green program by choosing eco-friendly models. This shouldn’t be hard as most mobile phone makers have already produced earth-friendly handsets that are free of harmful materials and are made of recycled or recyclable materials. Mobile makers have also started putting a phone’s user manual on the phone itself in lieu of printing it on paper. Many have also switched to using recycled paper for packaging and have included built-in solar panels for charging the battery.

Green experts believe technologies and alternative resources to mitigate greenhouse gas emissions are not in short supply — unlike discipline and resolve that is required from all of us. But for many Filipinos who are married to their handsets, carbon offsetting is probably the least of their concerns when they’re updating their Facebook status on their smartphone, a device that has a larger carbon footprint than ordinary phones. But, hey, who’s really counting?