I saw a poster ad this weekend for Tesco mobiles – something along the lines of “A new phone every year – long live the 12-month contract”…
Once I’d got past my surprise that Tesco was now selling phones as well, I couldn’t stop thinking about the implications of the ad… Here was Tesco, encouraging us to change our handset every year i.e. encouraging more consumption, more resource use, more waste and for what? An extra megapixel on the camera? A few more apps that will tell you where your nearest Starbucks is…?
I could have lived with it if was Lebara or some other obscure company out to make a quick buck… I’d understand that they wouldn’t have heard of a tricky little thing called sustainable consumption…
But this is Tesco! Yes, Tesco, that set up the Sustainable Consumption Institute at Manchester University…. Tesco whose chief executive last week said at the Consumer Goods Forum that the company needed to “create a mass movement in green consumption”…
The business model for the mobile phone industry in the UK has always irked me. Its contractual basis takes the cost of a handset out of the purchase decision. “Pay monthly for XX calls and YY texts and the phone comes free if you stay with us for a year and half…” When your contract runs out it is time for your “upgrade” – i.e. your are incentivised to extend the monthly fee by being offered a new ‘free’ phone… However, in environmental terms the handset is not ‘free’ – there has been an environmental cost in producing it and an environmental cost in disposing of it. How many thousands of perfectly functioning mobile phones end up in landfill every year?
In most other countries the handset is an upfront cost for the consumer, and not an insignificant one, which would make anyone think twice about flinging their old handset into the token recycling bag that most companies now offer… The UK model encourages someone to get through as many phones as possible in the shortest space of time.
A Green Monday event a couple of weeks ago debated the issues around sustainable consumption. A representative from WRAP (Waste and Resources Action Plan) was on the panel and said that as far as phones were concerned things were definitely changing – the Apple iPhone had effectively made people want to hold on to their handsets rather than changing them every other year. Hmmm… good theory, but perhaps the nice man from WRAP hadn’t heard that the “new and improved” iPhone was coming out days later…
So for now, I don’t see things changing drastically. Until mobile phone companies factor in the environmental cost of handsets into the current model, we’ll keep being encouraged to throw away our year-old handsets. And as for Tesco, I‘ve pointed out to them the inconsistency of their messages – I will let Tweeter followers know how they respond. Let’s hope Terry Leahy invites the head of Tesco Mobile to any future grand speeches on green consumption…
I totally agree. I saw the ad yesterday, designed in its ‘basics’ style as if to suggest austerity. The environmental cost of mobiles is huge because of the sheer number produced. I’ll be writing to Tesco about this too.
How ridiculous! a lot of mobile phones barely last the 12 months, so the 18 and 24 month contracts other providers are pushing us into are very unfair. Kudos to Tesco for not tying people into 2 YEAR deals
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