Sustainable telephony - 13 tips for an environmentally friendly use of your smartphone

Do you want to know how to get the most sustainable telephony can? Great! Even though smartphones have become an indispensable part of our everyday lives, their production is often anything but environmentally and socially compatible. What's more, most people only use it for a short time and then buy a new one. It is time to find an environmentally conscious way of dealing with cell phones and ensure that a single device serves its purpose for as long as possible.

In this article, you will therefore now learn how to use your smartphone sustainably.

Tip: I have listed for you in a separate post again exactly how to Dispose of electronic waste correctly can, if a device is absolutely no longer working and is available for sale used.

How to use your smartphone sustainably

Now I honestly don't want to keep you long at all. Let's just start right away with the tips and tricks for sustainable telephony and environmentally friendly use of the smartphone. Let's go!

1. value your own phone

Every smartphone has its own story - in it are rare earths such as coltan, tin or even gold. The mining of coltan in the Congo in particular is finding under life-threatening conditions and rarely without child labor takes place. There are no occupational health and safety regulations there. And the result of the run on the highly sought-after raw materials are often wars.

Therefore, appreciate how good you have it when you have a smartphone in your hands. Everyone can use their smartphone consciously and sustainably.

2. get a fairphone

Normally, the production of cell phones is not particularly transparent - for the reasons just described. The company Fairphone does it differently and produces robust, durable, fairly produced and traded smartphones - that is, without the morally questionable backgrounds.

However, it does not necessarily have to be the Fairphone be. When buying, simply make sure that your smartphone was produced as fairly as possible, consumes little energy and can be repaired by yourself. Which brings us to the next tip.

3. repair your cell phone instead of buying a new one

Many devices are built in such a way that users can't change much about the hardware. If you want to be sustainable with your cell phone, then you should at least have the chance to fix it yourself. Therefore, make sure that the battery is replaceable and that it is easy to replace the display yourself.

If you have two left hands, you can also use a repair service that takes care of your cell phone. Don't be tempted to take the easy way out and buy a new phone - because that doesn't belong in the category of "sustainable telephony".

4. switch to a fair mobile phone provider

Logically, there are now also environmentally friendly mobile communications providers. Goood The team will therefore donate 10 percent of your basic fee to a good cause of your choice. The team therefore donates 10 percent of your basic fee to a good cause of your choice.

Sustainable telephony also enables the StartUp Wetell. The team actively fights against the climate change, as well as intransparency and data abuse in the mobile communications market.

5. protect and care your smartphone for long durability

For many, it is unfortunately already a habit to replace the - usually still functional - cell phone after 18 - 24 months. However, sustainable telephony includes The deliberate goal of the longest possible service life. After all, the reduction in resources should have been worth it. Therefore, when your contract expires after 2 years, don't just choose a new smartphone across the board, but rather the credit that is often offered. If you take good care of it, for example with a smartphone case, your phone will still be in good shape anyway.

Tip: If a provider does not offer the credit on its own, you can also simply ask. Often you have success with it!

6. motivate your boss to climate neutral communication

The larger the company, the more energy it usually consumes. Above all, by making phone calls. Very few people care about this - but there are environmentally friendly providers for Business Telecommunicationswhich quite deliberately uses CO₂-neutrality, the use of green electricity, Paper saving and additional environmental services.

Tip: For all self-employed and those who want to become so, I recommend the article about sustainable foundation.

7. dispose old cell phone environmentally friendly

Before you carelessly throw it in the household trash where it doesn't belong, you should rather send your old smartphone to Hobbyist sell. And if it even still works, you certainly still make someone else happy with it, even if its best days are behind it.

If absolutely nothing works anymore, properly drop off your phone at the recycling center or an electronics store. Even better: You can also send your old cell phone to NABU or drop it off at a NABU collection point. The money from the recycling will then go directly into NABU's own insect protection fund. On the website of NABU you can learn more about it.

Tip: Don't forget to delete all your personal data before submitting it. Then you are on the safe side.

8. save the battery of your smartphone

Protect the battery from intense cold and heat. Turn off your phone when you sleep. And charge it only when it needs to be charged. If you don't charge it all night, even though it's already fully charged, you'll save your battery, which will last longer.

For me, "sustainable telephony" also includes conscious battery conservation. For example, close unnecessary applications. They are often still active in the background, even though that is completely unnecessary.

9. prefer a phone with replaceable battery

The more you use your smartphone, the sooner the battery loses its performance. Eventually, the point comes when you instinctively look around for a new phone. If you want to use your smartphone sustainably, then However, the replacement of the battery is usually sufficientso that the device runs like clockwork again. If you made sure that the battery is replaceable when you bought it, you can play this card now.

10. use the internet in an environmentally conscious way

Yes, that's right: you can not only make sustainable phone calls, but also surf sustainably. Here are some tips in fast forward:

• Use a sustainable search engine like Ecosia
• Search directly in the search engine and not via the browser bar
• Send download links rather than large files
• …

You can get even more tips in the article surf the internet sustainably.

11. switch to a green power provider

Whether landline or smartphone - phones need electricity! The juice you use to charge your phone should, of course, come from renewable energy sources and not from destructive coal or nuclear power. Vegan electricity or green electricity come, for example, from infinite energy sources such as wind, water or solar power. The Switching to a green electricity provider takes a maximum of 10 minutes - and you often save money in the process.

12. install environmentally friendly apps on your smartphone

After all, the cool thing about a smartphone is that it's has more to it than making phone calls and texting. There are now a lot of apps that can help you with the sustainable life even easier. You should install the following.

• Zero Waste Apps (e.g. Too Good To Go against food waste)
• Vegan apps (e.g. Happy Cow)
• Slow Fashion Apps (e.g. Kleiderkreisel)
• Environmentally friendly search engine (e.g. Ecosia)

Tip: Also around to stop smoking there are useful apps. Just take a look at the linked post if you want to know more.

13. make other things superfluous with your smartphone

Think and live a little more minimalist - with the help of your smartphone! Because for me, "sustainable telephony" also includes replacing as many things as possible with it. For example, if you have a smartphone, you don't need to buy the following things:

• Digital camera
• Navigation device
• MP3 player
• Spirit level
• Gym
• Notepad
• …

This list is incredibly long. What I mean by that is: you can get through a wide variety of functions of your smartphone used as long as possible on sustainable way to save money and conserve natural resources.

Can you think of any other things? Then just write me a comment with your hint.

Making sustainable calls is not complicated!

As you can see, anyone can use their smartphone sustainably. And everyone should do so, because the manufacturing process is unfortunately anything but harmless these days. Fortunately, there are providers who solve these problems - and lots of tips for using your cell phone in an environmentally friendly and conscious way.

I hope you were able to take some things away from this post. Do you have any questions or suggestions on the subject of sustainable telephony? Then always bring them to me in the comments.

Stay sustainable,

PS: Similar to the production of smartphones, flying by plane is also not harmless. Did you know that you can at least offset your greenhouse gas emissions with a compensation payment? In the article about the CO2 compensation you can learn more about it.