Waking Up Sleeping Phones Stimulating the Recycling of Old Phones Through Education Willem Duijvelshoff University of Amsterdam
tool to increase the awareness towards the recycling of old phones.
Amsterdam, Netherlands duijvel@gmail.com
Author Keywords
Thiago Elid Della Monica
Smartphone; sustainability; recycling; e-waste; behavior
Leiden University Sao Paulo, Brazil thiago.elid@gmail.com Joan Domingo Riu University of Amsterdam Barcelona, Spain. joanduriu@gmail.com
Abstract Consumption of smartphones is increasing worldwide, and in parallel, users replace these devices in relatively short cycles. The large demand of smartphones requires lots of resources, energy and raw materials to make and transport all these products. In the specific case of smartphones, when users replace them, they tend to store the old phones in drawers at home. This behavior prevents the materials to be recycled and put back into the system. Therefore, encouraging users to remove their old phones from drawers would make the consumption of smartphones more sustainable. In this paper we propose SeeThru, a platform that educates people through games, stories and information, as a
1 – Introduction From the beginning of the 21st century, the smartphone has become a widely used technology around the world. According to TechCrunch, there will be 6.1 Billion smartphone subscriptions by 2020 (Lunden, n.pag.). Due to these fast advancements in technology the smartphone is also a product with relatively quick rate of replacement (an average of 1820 months) (Kridel, n.pag.). Making and shipping new smartphones requires a lot of energy and raw materials, with an impact on the environment and human health. Also, the fact that electronics become obsolete in a relatively quick cycles, leads to a lot of waste. Waste that in the case of the (smart) phones often ends stored in drawers at home. In fact, in Europe alone there is an estimation of 1.6 billion phones sleeping in drawers (Fairphone, n.pag.). The characteristic of the product and the scarcity of the materials needed to make them, makes the consumption of smartphones unsustainable. Firstly, more resources are needed to build new smartphones. Each time, more minerals are extracted to make the different components, and more energy is used for
making and shipping those phones. Secondly, the old phones become waste that finishes on landfills, often located in developing countries such as India where legal requirements are low (Borromeo, n.pag.). The waste generates toxic gases and liquids that pollute air and water. This affects the environment and the human health (Maheshwari et al 4). These harmful effects are the main reasons to move towards a more sustainable mode of production and consumption of the smartphone. The research done displayed technical reasons as a main cause of quick replacement. At the same time a lack of information about where and how users recycle their old phones turned out to be the main reason for not recycling them (only 10% of the phones are properly recycled)(source). The lack of proper recycling happens despite the fact that there are several programs existing in the Netherlands. However, the fact that people don’t have information where to recycle goes together with a rational decision of keeping old phones at home as spares. Thus, users do not have enough motivation to recycle phones, but are also not aware of the importance of doing so. The main question for this research turned out to be the following: how can we stimulate users to take old phones from their drawers and put them back into the system? To make the consumption of smartphones more sustainable, there is the need to increase awareness and provide information about the existing options for recycling. A main insight from this research is that it is of great relevance to make users realize the importance of recycling old phones. Providing them with information and awareness is needed to do the job. SeeThru is the web platform developed at MediaLAB Amsterdam for this job. 1. PROBLEM FRAMEWORK
STATEMENTS
AND
Mugge claims that stimulating product attachment may be a valuable strategy for a more sustainable consumption (119). Product attachment is mainly driven by memories the product generates to its users (Page 280), as well as the design an aspect that user can see as part of their identity (Mugge et al, 465). While the memories occur after a long time of ownership, the expression of user’s personality goes linked with fashion, changing from time to time and in some cases making the product obsolete only for being considered old fashioned (Mugge et al, 465), despite the memories it can contain. Differently, for many electronic products the obsolescence comes from the technological improvements that generate a feeling of disappointment with the user. Even if the product works good, users know that a new product could work better, processes stimulate a desire for replacement (Page, 280). Looking at mobile phones, as mentioned above, there is a relative high rate of changing to new devices compared to other electronic products. To understand this mechanism it can be useful to look at the phone industry and its rapid advancements. This is not entirely because of rapid advancements; there is also a mechanism called planned obsolescence at play, this means that most smartphone producers release a new device every year, even though the improvements are minimal, resulting in a “shorter life cycle, and an increased mining of rare earth minerals” (Rodriguez et al, 1). This established process acts as a driving force in tempting the consumers into new contracts and, therefore, tempting them into upgrade to the newest device, which makes smartphones become obsolete in at a quick pace. Understanding this industry forms the basis for our project. And coming closer to an understanding of the industry it became clear that making the consumption of smartphones more sustainable, the biggest impact can be made on the production level, making this form of impact a responsibility of the smartphone industry. This realization leaded the direction of the design process towards a focus on the post consumption level.
THEORETICAL The found frictions in the life cycle, supported that there is a huge impact to be made on the post consumption level
as well. The methods used for finding frictions in consumer behavior found in our research, will be further explained in the next section. These frictions pointed towards a lack of awareness and motivation amongst consumers to recycle their old phones. Therefore, our direction towards a design solution was aimed to start filling this gap. We put the focus on the post-consumption part, making sure that when people replace their phones, the old ones go to a proper recycling facility. To develop a good design solution to promote behavioral change there is the need to understand user’s behavior. Moreover, once the reasons for a certain behavior are clear, there is the need to make users realize their behavior must be changed. Users have to be willing to change their behavior. Finally, this change must be facilitated, giving them the tools or facilities to perform this change. Making users willing to change it is not effective if they don’t have the agency to do so. Not giving the possibility to actually make the change does not solve the problem, but generates frustration (Hermsen et al, 77). Making users willing to change their behavior could be facilitated through some incentive; a trigger point that will make user behave differently. One of the techniques that could help in driving this change is gamification. Gamification is “a persuasive technology that attempts to influence user behavior by activating individual motives via game-design elements” (Petkov et al 2). This basically means making a routine fun, which is perceived as boring, by adding a playful element. Nevertheless, gamification must be applied and designed correctly to achieve the desired goals, because it cannot be considered a remedy to change user behaviour and increase willingness to do good. Gamification can be a complement to achieve a final goal, but not a substitute of that (Laskowski 376). 2. METHODS AND RESULTS The theoretical framework pointed towards two possible ways of making the consumption of smartphones more sustainable; either preventing the quick replacement through attachment, or promoting the proper recycling of old phones. To make the decision in what direction we
should go there was the need to know what motivations the user have in replacing their phones, and why they store the old phones at home instead of recycling them. Several methods were used to discover these motives, leading to different frictions. 2.1 MOTIVATION TO REPLACE PHONES Smartphone users from the Netherlands, India and Spain were asked to write a love and a break up letter for their phones. The Love/Breakup letter method is a research methods where users write down a letter for a certain product or service. The method gives insights into the user’s perceptions and allows the user to select and highlight feelings towards the product, as opposed to asking directly what they like or dislike or asking them to highlight specific aspects in a closed question. The letters reveal the emotional connection (or disconnection) a person has with the produc. In combination with literature review, this method helped to understand the personal reasons that bring users to buy a specific phone and replace it after a while. 28 letters were collected, and despite the different nationalities of the respondents certain commonalities were discovered. The design of the phone and the utilities of the phone (for example: social media, navigation, connection with friends) came forward as the main reasons to love the phone. However, technological inconveniences such as unreliable batteries or slow interactions caused disappointment in the user’s experience. And because of this, the desire for a new phones raised. In 4 cases, the motivation to buy a new phone was the possibility to get a good deal with the phone company. 2.2 MOTIVATION TO KEEP PHONES AT HOME, AND A LACK OF AWARENESS Users were asked to participate in focus groups and in personal interviews to get a better insight in their perceptions and thoughts about the use of smartphones and their perceptions of their own behavior. From the two focus groups: one consisted of 4 participants and another of 5. To create a comfortable environment the topic was introduced with a game “I keep at home all my phones
since 1997”, “I keep my old phone just in case some day I need it” and “if I wanted to recycle my phones, I wouldn’t know where to bring it” were some of the statements during the meetings. In some other cases users keep their phones at home as spares as a rational decision. The conversations also pinpointed a disconnection between the user and different existing recycling programs, as it turned out that they were not aware of these infrastructures. The gap found between users and existing recycling initiatives proves that there is a lack of awareness towards the importance of recycling and how to actually come in action. This lack of awareness lies in the background, acting as a main cause of the lack of motivation. 2.3 DISCUSSION The reasons to replace the smartphone were mainly technical, and due to the technological improvements. So taking the size and the complexity of this problematic into account, made us realize that stopping planned obsolescence or making users change their device less often was a hard case to solve through design alone. However, as the lack of recycling comes from the gap between users and recycling programs, and from the lack of awareness about the importance of recycling, developing a solution on this level seemed more reasonable. According to the theoretical framework provided, promoting user’s behavioral change requires a tool that makes them willing and able to change, both of these aspects are important. Also, introducing gamification helps in encouraging users the change their routines. With those principles in mind we developed the SeeThru platform.
For doing this, SeeThru is divided in two parts; the educational part, and the active part. The first part, focusing on education, consists of several features that will educate people in a engaging way. The main challenge in that part is that each individual is engaged with different features. Thus, SeeThru presents a quiz, allows interaction between users, contains scientific information about the materials found in phones, and provides stories of the countries where the raw materials are found. User with different levels of knowledge and different incentives can interact with the site. The second part makes users able to come in action, providing information about the possibilities available, depending on where the user is located. The active part would be complemented with a network of bins located in strategic places, with a gamified aspect involved to give positive feedback when the user finally deposits their old phone. This positive feedback is thought as an extra motivation to encourage users to take the action.
3. THE SEETHRU CONCEPT SeeThru is a platform that encourages the recycling of old smartphones. This platform focuses on educating users about the environmental impact of the mining, production and consumption of smartphones and thereby highlighting the importance of recycling. Also, it provides practical information about where users can find a place to deposit it.
Figure 1: Welcome page of SeeThru platform.
Acknowledgements We would like to thank Sander Hermsen and Nazli Cila for advice and review of our methods and findings, and especially Marco van Hout for his support and coaching.
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Figure 2: Educational part of SeeThru platform
4. FUTURE WORK There are several details that would need more concretization in the future. SeeThru would need testing to define the interaction with users and see the affectivity of the educational aspects. Secondly, the active part should be more detailed, developing the smart bins and deciding where to locate them. The smart bins should also have better integration with the platform. Furthermore, for the collection of deposited phones, there are several companies in the Netherlands that focus on collecting, recycling and refurbishing old phones. This takes away the need for SeeThru to develop its own infrastructure for recycling and refurbishment. Finally, the whole platform and infrastructure of the bins should be tested with a pilot, with relevance for the Dutch context. This pilot could for example consist of a competition between 2 universities, companies or cities. Users could deposit their old phones and the winner would increase its prestige and public recognition through sustainable sensitivity. In conclusion: we believe that organizing competitions, the characteristics of the educational part, and the characteristics of the smart bins, SeeThru can increase the rate of recycled phones in the Netherlands.
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