Case Background

Sustainability of a system is used largely in industrial processes to improve efficiency and profit margin since industrial Revolution, however, it was not in the spotlight before globalization concept was practically implemented in the economy in the late 1970s. the internet has altered communication by giving access to everyone on the planet mainly through smart phones.

Every day, new smart phones are revealed with faster processors and higher technical specifications, the question about smartphones that no-one cares about is what happens to the smart phones when they are no longer used? This is a concerning issue considering the fact that phone manufacturers are reducing the smartphones lifetime constantly for two major reasons, keeping up with technological progress and increasing profit margin by forcing the customers by updating to newer models. Hence mobile phones or cell phones are one of the most concerning issues regarding environment sustainability

In this report, two major phone manufacturers are discussed and analysed. The chosen manufacturers are Apple and Samsung. Their share of phone market (over 42% of total market share in total) and transparency regarding environmentally friend approaches are the reason for choosing these two manufacturers. Analysed information is gathered by studying technical reports and web searches using keyword searches. Also, it should be considered that only smartphone division and total revenue are discussed in this report due to the fact that Apple manufactures notebooks and smart phones, while Samsung has a more diverse portfolio.

Apple and Samsung publish an annual report every year in order to communicate their stakeholders transparently. One of the discussed items in the annual report is Reading their Environmental Progress Report, Apple claims of using 100 percent of renewable energy and reducing their climate impact by their products and facilities (Apple.com 2018).

They are even aiming to make their future material without mining form the earth and using only recycled or renewable ones and return their used materials to the market to be used again. Besides, they try to make the process of recycling old Apple devices through their new Apple GiveBack experience for their users and that is how they try to decrease their E-Waste amount.

Apple is widely complained of forcing its consumers to purchase new hardware on regular basis rather than allow them to upgrade it on account of the fact that buying more products ends more profits for them. Furthermore, making upgradable products costs more for the manufacturers. It is argued that even apple makes its products non-upgradable even there is only a small benefit as new products provide a better user experience.

In addition, Apple claims that it has reduced 29 percent of the plastic using in their packaging in 2017 by replacing it with recycled papers and moulded fibre alternatives.

In the past, Apple was heavily criticized for its lack of insight when it came to the environment. The company was particularly notorious for energy it utilized to power its servers as well as negative environmental impacts. These and other actions sparked obvious complaints from organizations such as Greenpeace (Arndt and Ewe 2017). To the credit of Apple, some very real changes have occurred since the time. For example, the company eliminated the use of arsenic and PVC within its smartphone displays as far back as 2008. Another notable improvement surrounds their use of fossil fuels.

Discussion

On the other side, Samsung declares in their annual report that they are trying to achieve their goal of using 100 percent of renewable energy by 2020 (Samsung.com 2018). The company is also mitigating the use of the natural materials by using Post Consumer Materials (PCM) which is a transformed materials form water bottles and other consumer plastics.

In Samsung’s recycling Centre in Korea, they collect used appliance in order to extract copper, aluminium and plastic to be renewed and be used in new products. However, it should be noted that there is no recycling option for Samsung phones and there is no further transparency on what would they do with them.

In order to compare these two manufacturers regarding sustainability, the general structure of a smart phone should be discussed. This also would provide the opportunity to offer more environmentally friendly solutions.

The main structure that covers all other components of a phone, Apple smart phones have metallic bodies which provide the ability to be recycled and used for other purposes. To attain the recycling of the bodies Apple Giveback is one of the supportive body initiative that had been started by the firm (Apple. Com 2018). It enables them to reconcile their waste and reuse for different purposes. However, it should also be noted that recycling of the metal bodies such as aluminium, steel, copper and others also releases harmful gases in the environment but they can easily be mitigated using so proper safety measures and Apple has focus on it.

On the contrary, Samsung mainly uses plastic made bodies. The plastics materials that are used for the development of the body are recyclable, however, they require more sophisticated technology to be recycled and offer less profit from recycling due to cheap price oil. Another fact that should be noted about Polycarbonate cases that Samsung bodies are made up of is that in the recycling process causes bisphenol A leaching which is undesirable (Morin, Arp and Hale 2015). Additionally, unlike metal body the plastic has a limitation to recycling and adding it to the complexity involved in recycling.

So, taking all the above discussion into context it would be justified to state that in terms of smartphone body recycling Apple is more sustainable in context to Samsung. The reason for the lead that Apple entertains is that Apple uses metal as the most prominent material for the development of the smartphone bodies in contradiction to Samsung’s recyclable plastic body. However, Samsung is also drifting towards the metallic bodies for its smartphone but as it is a budget smartphone developer so it is only using metallic bodies in its luxury models and not budget smartphones. The company needs to change its approach and should include metallic body in all its smartphones including the budget phones to ensure environmental sustainability in terms of body.

Apple and Samsung both the firms have shown their preference of using gorilla glass as their protector glass because of the prominence it offers. The protector glass is an industrial glass is which usually referred as “gorilla glass” is strengthened glass with “alkali-alum inosilicate” (Bristogianni et al. 2018). This glass is recyclable too, but the recycled glass is not as good as the primary glass due to irreversible chemical process that happens in the glass due to exposure to heat. Hence, the use of a recyclable glass in the smartphone is not a suitable idea for the firms as it will degrade the quality of their product. However, it has also been identified that disposing of the industrial glass exposes the environment to pollution because of the harmful gasses released by it.

Body

So, the firms should recycle their glass and should use it in other sectors other than smartphones to ensure that their quality is maintained. For the discussed discussion Samsung can use the opportunity more effectively because of their wide range of products. Samsung can use the recycled glass in its bulb manufacturing firms and other units which does not need the strength as strong as a protector glass. Apple will also have to identify opportunities to utilise the glass and as part of it, the firm can sell the recycled glass to different glass industries.

This component which is made of multiple Integrated Circuits(ICs) and provides the required processing power for the smartphone. IC’s are usually made of semiconductors which provide more effective circuit design but they are almost impossible to recycle or provide a small profit margin (Allen et al. 2015). They also release toxic gases upon burning. About 80% of any smart phone is made of ICs which results in major issues when disposing of smartphones.

One of the solutions to the discussed issue is transition to graphene which has more life time and easier recyclability opportunities. Graphene is one of the strongest semimetal that has a small overlap among its valence and conduction band (Raccichini et al. 2015). Graphene is also one of the toxic materials but a concentration of 50 µg/ml is non-toxic and the recyclability of the materials is also readily easy and effective than the traditional ICs and hence is recommended.

While Samsung uses an open source operating system named “android”. Apple on the contrary, uses IOS which is developed by Apple itself, using a black box operating system. It provides Apple with the ability to slow down older models and in the process, force customers to update to newer models, resulting shorter lifetime of smartphones and more threats to the environment (Yadav and Maheshwari 2016). It is also worth mentioning that Android devices have shorter life time due to less optimized operating systems.

The problem to the discussed challenge is very extreme because highly optimised operating systems such as Ubuntu, Linux and others are available in the market but they lack user friendliness as that of Android (Bala, Sharma and Gaur 2015). So, Samsung should launch demo models with highly optimised operating systems and consult with the operating system developers to offer a highly optimised systems. Depending upon the review from the demo models the company should plan its following steps.

Samsung phones always come with batteries with more capacity, but the phones usually have same operating hours as iPhones. While, iPhones have much less battery capacity which shows that software and application used by apple are more optimized. Furthermore, the battery of the phones are Lithium ion batteries which if disposed inappropriately release lead and other harmful gases in the environment that is harmful for both the environment and the living beings (Hanumantha et al. 2015). So, the firms should invest in researches over green batteries especially on sodium or magnesium ion batteries (solid state batteries) which are more cost efficient than lithium ion batteries and are also eco-friendly (Kato et al. 2016). However, sodium or magnesium ion batteries have certain disadvantages that needs to be mitigated but the vast research base of Samsung and Apple can readily achieve a breakthrough in the discussed field.

Protector Glass

While apple offers to buy the older versions and recycle them properly, Samsung does not have such a policy regarding used phones.  Report shows that Apple has profited about 40 million US dollars in 2015 which is about 2% of company revenue in the same year. Samsung reports does not show such a thing at all (Apple.com 2018). Apple has prevented total of 2.8 tons of different materials such as plastic, nickel and lead to get into the circulation. Samsung in the company’s blog the firm continuously discussed about the recycling of its product (Samsung.com). However, it needs to be more specific about the measures and their impacts that the firm is adopting towards environmental sustainability.

Both companies have located their major factories in developing countries, due to economic reasons such as cheaper energy, cheaper work force and less transportation costs for other components (Jia et al. 2018). The trend is not limited to both the firms but majority of tech companies do the same. The discussed measure has multiple environmental effects, such as over population in these cities which usually are not designed for such purposes and gets benefited as they are not quite efficient and environmentally friendly. Another fact that should be noted is that this cheap energy is usually generated using conventional sources such as oil, gas and coal which results in greenhouse gases generation (Thomason 2018). One of the effect of this phenomena also includes over mining natural sources to provide the raw materials and sources.

So, to mitigate the threat of the above discussed factors the firm should abide by their corporate social responsibility and play a role in educating its employee and the residents of the area where the factories are established (Kennedy, welch and Monshipouri 2017). Adopting of the discussed measure will not only ensure that the firms are contributing to a sustainable environment but is also educating the locals to earn support in their cause of environmental sustainability.

Regarding to the workforce and labour issues, both brands have been accused of labour abuse. Apple is widely depended on China on account of the lower cost of manufacturing and labour.  One of the factors that add to the prices of apple products is not finding of an alternative to Chinese manufacturers. Nonetheless, researches show that this company’s work forces in China have been harshly under pressure (Clarke and Boersma 2017). Samsung also has been sued several times by child rights activist’s groups over alleged use of child labours in its Chinese and Malaysian factories (Iqbal and Chuan 2016).

The discussion above has made it evident that both of the subjects are prominent leaders in the smartphone market and are attempting to environmentally sustain themselves. However, their efforts have not been successful to a complete extend. The findings from the discussion above have revealed that Apple at first was ignorant about environmental sustainability however acting on the complains from environmentalists the firm acted. The actions of the firm have been made through its annual report where it claims that 100 renewable materials are being used for the mobile development (Apple.com 2018).

Apple and Samsung both have deployed environmental and human safety measures that includes recycling plants, human’s safety regulations and other aspects but they are lagging in some aspects. To mitigate the discussed aspects, the first and foremost measure that they should adopt is increasing the efficiency of the adopted measures. The efficiency of the discussed measures could be adopted by auditing the processes and their outputs (Rosseman and vom Brocke 2015). Furthermore, the next step will include continuous improvement in the processes based on the audit reports. The audit reports will be most helpful in attaining sustainability in terms of workforce management and in terms of their corporate social responsibility (Sanders, Cope and Pulsipher 2018). The government of the factories can also play a major role by inducting new rules and regulations that would enforce the firms to cite special focus on the above mentioned issues (Netland, Schloetzer and Ferdows 2015).

For environmental sustainability they should focus on the use of the recyclable materials and other aspects that have been discussed above. The summary of the above discussed measure states that the firms should focus more on readily recyclable materials such as use of metals for body, solid state batteries for better optimisation of application, collaborating with highly optimised operating system developers for a better functionality. Additionally, induction of graphene and other disruptive technologies, techniques and materials enhance better recyclability. Finally, focusing more research effort towards the green technologies which will support their environmental cause and will also add value to their firm which in the process will offer sustainability.

The flowchart attached below depicts the strategic approach that should be adopted by the firms to have a better recycle life cycle.

Figure: Recycle Flowchart

(Source: Created by author using MS Visio)

The findings from above have been summarised and the following flowchart is being presented. The image below has inducted all the aspects from auditing where the sustainability needs of the firm will be determined first and if identified the next step will include determination of potential solution. If the solution exists than the firm will adopt the existing method and it will be reviewed for success. If no solution is available then the firm will research and develop new tools, techniques and technologies to mitigate the threat.

Figure: Strategic Design Flowchart

(Source: Created by author using MS Visio)

Conclusion

Apple and Samsung have the highest share of market at the moment, hence it is not unreasonable to say they are the trend setters of smartphones market. If they choose a new approach toward more sustainable solutions, the other brands would follow as well. These includes moving the factories to other locations to prevent overpopulation. This approach also improves the energy efficiency.

Another effective approach is to force the manufacturers to establish recycling lines and offer the customers to recycle the old phones. The last solution is preventing them to slow down the old phones.  The most effective approach is to use recyclable material as much as possible to encourage recycling after the lifetime of the smartphone finishes.

It should also be considered that, majority of this approaches would apply new costs and reduce profit margin to the manufacturers, hence it is highly unlikely for them to choose these approaches willingly, so the best way to force them is by imposing new laws and regulations by governments. the companies can be compensated by paying less tax if they choose these approaches.

Hence, the discussion could be emphasised to conclude that both the firms are attempting to offer sustainable results however, they are lacking behind in some aspects which will can be mitigated through a proper attention and deployment of disruptive tools and techniques which have been discussed above. The report has also presented two flowcharts to articulate the recycling process and overall process of the firms.

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