WAKE-UP CALL – Guest blog by Hannibal Rhoades, The Gaia Foundation

This month the Gaia Foundation launch Wake Up Call, an animation in collaboration with Steve Cutts. Taking a fast-paced look at the lifecycle of our gadgets, it reveals the true social and ecological costs of our technology, and the nightmare we’ve found ourselves in. In this blog Hal Rhoades unpacks the issues explored in the animation and explains how we can all be the change we want to see.

On your way to work this morning you no doubt squeezed yourself onto public transport alongside a sea of people engrossed in their I-pads/ Smartphones/ Kindles [delete as appropriate]. Most likely, you were doing the very same thing, and the chances are that if you look around yourself at any time of day you’ll see that the image of human-plus-gadget has become ubiquitous in our society.

Whilst the evidence of our own eyes tells us that personal technology has become an indispensable social appendage for those in ‘The West’, the 5.9 billion mobile phone subscribers worldwide reveals that the relentless spread of these gizmos is global. In Africa for instance, half of the continents population is believed to own a mobile phone, and numbers are on the rise. So, going by the latest statistics, that’s over 500 million mobile owners in Africa alone.

With stats like these it’s easy to get the impression that today the whole world truly is ‘connected’. And in some ways this is true enough. We’ve all experienced the enormous value of free online conversations with far-flung relatives, peppered across the globe. And, as well as being wonderfully convenient, these communications have been put to great use building revolutionary campaigns for environmental and social justice around the world.

But there is another side to the story. One that we ignore at our peril.

The great irony of our digital age is that as we become more virtually ‘connected’, our understandings of the physical reality of what Earth can sustain have been severed. We have lost our connection with the source of all life.

Making, transporting, consuming and disposing of our gadgets and technology is resource intensive, environmentally and socially destructive and has severe consequences for our global climate. In other words, the means by which our tech finds its way to (and leaves) our shelves is catastrophic for everyone. We urgently need to Wake Up to the true costs of our technology.

Let’s take a look at the average life story of a Smartphone…

Firstly, in order to mine the raw materials necessary for manufacturing electronics, land grabs are being initiated on a huge scale by corporations the world over. Securing the resources to feed a hungry market, they are dispossessing local communities of their land and destroying livelihoods. The land is strafed for ores and minerals in mines that devastate local habitats, pollute water sources and create waste deserts. The litany of elements extracted to produce electronics are then transported across vast tracts of ocean and land for manufacture in outsourcing hotspots such as China. Here, workers are paid a pittance for dangerously long hours spent feverishly assembling circuit boards and the like.

Thereafter, this story of origin is conveniently hidden from consumers behind the pristine packaging and super sleek design of our gadgets. Their cleanliness belies the environmentally noxious legacy they have left, and continue to leave, as the lifecycle moves on.
After a time, our gadgets begin to look a little less shiny, a little more scuffed and, given a helpful nudge by the obsolescence built into much of our tech, start to play up a bit. All the while, social pressures exerted through advertising are starting to mount telling us about ‘newer, better, faster’ stuff. This can signal only one thing – it’s time for an upgrade.
Today we’re upgrading faster than ever before, replacing our phones as regularly as every 12-18 months in some nations. But the procession of obsolete and unfashionable gadgetry leaving our possession at a rate of knots doesn’t just disappear. Much of it will become the 20-50 million tonnes of ‘E-waste’ produced globally each year.
This prodigious quantity of waste will more than likely find its way to an E-wasteland in a nation like Ghana or the Philippines. Shipped there under the pretext of being ‘second-hand’, a resource for ‘bridging the digital divide’, in reality this tech is merely junk. It will sink into the graying muck, or be collected barefoot, then burnt by communities who find themselves living in sooty shanties, by black rivers, subsisting off the money they can make from selling scrap on the margins.
From the first to the last phase of their lives, the problems our gadgets pose at present are nightmarishly toxic to our own future, the planet’s and those of future generations… So what can we do about it?

First of all we must exert pressure on those steering the industry and those with authority over them. We need corporations to take ‘extended producer responsibility’ seriously. If they want to continue to churn out new phones, laptops and so on, then they must be made responsible for their proper reinvestment, moving us towards a circular economy that breaks the linear cycle of ‘take, make, dispose’, and helps build a ‘zero-waste’ future.

Other responsibilities lie closer to home. The old economic truism of ‘supply and demand’ reminds us that we can make a difference by simply choosing not to buy a new phone or upgrading ‘just because’.

By building up our immunity to the relentless marketing of high tech gadgetry we’re acknowledging the real key to this problem: that we simply consume far too much. The rate and scale of our insatiable desire for this stuff, expertly encouraged by companies whose first focus is on profit (let’s not fool ourselves), is helping drive the land grabs, the mining, the human rights violations, pollution and contributing to climate change.

Consciously consuming less is one part, albeit a quieter part, of the revolution for responsible technology. So, if you can help it, try not to buy new. Re-use old phones and laptops, swap them, get them fixed by people pioneering a tech-y fight back against overconsumption and learn to repair them yourself. Love your stuff and try to be part of a new kind of materialism that values better, not more.

But, if you really, really must have that new gizmo, at least be cognizant of the issues: Research which companies recycle best, research who is ‘greener’ (relatively speaking), or, for goodness sake, shell out for a Fairphone and support a company that is really recognising the issues. The tools are there for you to be a more responsible consumer and steward of the planet. Your actions – your cash – speaks the language that drives the whole system. Use it wisely and be the change you want to see.

And remember, whilst there are plenty of people that will tell you that you can’t make a difference – that it’s hopeless and cliché – the difference between doing nothing and doing something is, quite literally, infinite.
To find out more about this specific issue, check out the Short Circuit Report from The Gaia Foundation.

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The Gaia Foundation is committed to regenerating cultural and biological diversity, and restoring a respectful relationship with the Earth. They work with local communities in Africa, South America, Asia and Europe to secure land, seed, food and water sovereignty.

With the release of ‘Wake Up Call – Why the Tech Dream is becoming a Nightmare’, the Gaia Foundation has extended its reach to include the encroachment of technology into all aspects of our lives. ‘Wake Up Call’ is a warning that no technological fixes will help us face the moral and ethical crises we face today. Climate Revolution agrees with Gaia that creating a viable future is really about justice – for humans, the earth and future generations of all species.

Liz Hosken, Director of The Gaia Foundation says, “There are now more mobile phones on the planet than there are humans, and when we look around at our addiction and behaviour, we cannot deny the absurdity of it all. ‘Wake up Call’ uses humour to make us look at ourselves, but also to highlight the real devastation caused at every stage of the production and use of these gadgets. Key drivers of this growth are the surge in consumerism and an increasingly throwaway culture, fuelled by marketing and delusions of necessity; and encouraged by the built-in obsolescence of our electronic gadgets.”