On Friday March 31, SMART – Sustainable Market Actors for Responsible Trade – will organize a workshop on identifying the environmental and social hotspots, or risks, in the product life cycle of mobile phones.

Description of the event

The University of Oslo and Fafo Research Foundation (Norway) organise the first stakeholder roundtable in Amsterdam to evaluate the social and environmental risks found in the lifecycle of mobile phones. The meeting is organised around the different phases in the product lifecycle, with presentations about the design of mobile phones, the resource extraction and processing phase of the minerals for the mobile phones, the manufacturing process of mobile phones, and the end-of-life phase, in particular recycling.

In the discussions, representatives of the industry, workers, non-governmental organisations, and researchers will identify particular hotspots in the product lifecycle. This process will inform a social and environmental sustainability hotspot analysis, resulting in a final selection of hotspots.

Speakers

The coördinator of the GoodElectronics Network, Alejandro Gonzalez, and the director ICT of UndustriAll Global Union, Kan Matsuzaki, will give a presentation on the risks of phase 3; the production and assembly of mobile phones.

Other speakers are: Maja van der Velden, Associatge Professor, Institute for Informatics, University of Oslo, Mark Taylor, Senior Researcher, Fafo Research Foundation, Oslo, Miquel Ballester Salvà, Product and Resource Efficiency Manager, Fairphone, Anders S.G. Andrae, Huawei Sweden R&D Center, Safanto Bulango, Researcher, Max Impact, Andrew Cooke, Estelle Levin Ltd, Abdul Karim Sumani, Greater Accra Scrap Dealers Assocation, Ghana, Colton Bangs, Market Intelligence & Business Research, Umicore, Belgium, Martin Oteng-Ababio, Senior Lecturer, Department of Geography, University of Ghana, Tineke Lamboy, Professor, Nyenrode Business University (SMART project leader, textiles), Martine Bosman, Reseacher, Nyenrode Business University (SMART project researcher, textiles)

Event location

De Waag, Nieuwmarkt 4
1012 CR Amsterdam