Fairphone has created a top 10 of materials that will be further researched to optimize the supply chain. One of Fairphone's principal aims is to support fair materials and incorporate them into their smartphones. However, mobile phones contain hundreds of different materials, combining more than 40 elements in fact (about one-third of the existing elements in the periodic table) and because it’s impossible to focus on so many resources all at once, they decided to prioritize.
Fairphone worked with The Dragonfly Initiative to develop a set of criteria that would help them prioritize which material supply chains they could engage with. Based on these criteria, 38 different materials were evaluated used in the production of smartphones. The criteria are not exhaustive and certainly don’t include all of the concerns related to the various supply chains, but it’s a starting point for identifying the most significant and persistent issues.
The outcome of The Dragonfly Initiative’s methodology was a shortlist of ten materials that Fairphone would like to focus on. They are: tin, tantalum, tungsten, gold, cobalt, copper, gallium, indium, nickel, and rare earth metals.
Read the complete blog on the value chain here.
