Research Approach

Lifecycle thinking

Our research takes a lifecycle approach to mobile phones: from conception as technology design to the mining of minerals in Africa and South America to produce its materials; from the manufacturing sites in Asia to mobile phone use in Europe; and finally to repair, recycling, and waste.

Sustainability

In order to analyse the sustainability of mobile phones, we use three guiding resources. The first one is a set of Planetary Boundaries - which are central to the Earth System framework proposed by a group of Earth System and environmental scientists, led by Johan Rockström from the Stockholm Resilience Centre and Will Steffen from the Australian National University. The second resource is a set of eleven priorities, which form the Social Foundation for overcoming human deprivation, as raised in the UN’s Rio+20 conference and described by economist Kate Raworth. Taken together, these two resources overlap, but also extend, with the UN's Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).

Financing

The SMART project has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement No 693642. The contents of this website are the sole responsibility of the SMART project and do not necessarily reflect the views of the European Union.

Publications

Oteng-Ababio, Martin & van der Velden, Maja (2020). Connectivity in Chaotic Urban Spaces: Mapping Informal Mobile Phone Market Clusters in Accra, Ghana. Journal of Asian and African Studies.  ISSN 0021-9096. . doi: 10.1177/0021909620960147 Show summary

Oteng-Ababio, Martin; van der Velden, Maja & Taylor, Mark Beaumont (2020). Building Policy Coherence for Sound Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment Management in a Developing Country. The Journal of Environment & Development.  ISSN 1070-4965.  29 . doi: 10.1177/1070496519898218 Show summary

Taylor, Mark Beaumont & Van Der Velden, Maja (2019). Resistance to Regulation: Failing Sustainability in Product Lifecycles. Sustainability.  ISSN 2071-1050.  11(22) . doi: 10.3390/su11226526 Full text in Research Archive.

Junge, I. (2019). Modularity as one principle in sustainable technology design - a design case study on ICT. In PLATE: Product Lifetimes And The Environment 2019.

van der Velden, M., Taylor, M.B., and M. Oteng-Ababio (2019). Sustainable Product Lifecycles: Asystemic approach to regulation. In PLATE: Product Lifetimes And The Environment 2019.

Schneider, Alice Frantz (2019). Informal processing of electronic waste in Agbogbloshie, Ghana: A complex adaptive systems perspective. CEUR Workshop Proceedings.

van der Velden, Maja (2018). Digitalisation and the UN Sustainable Development Goals: What role for design. ID&A Interaction design & architecture(s).  ISSN 1826-9745.  (37), s 160- 174

van der Velden, M. (2018). ICT and Sustainability: Looking Beyond the Anthropocene. In: Kreps D., Ess C., Leenen L., Kimppa K. (eds) This Changes Everything – ICT and Climate Change: What Can We Do?. HCC13 2018. IFIP Advances in Information and Communication Technology, vol 537. Springer, Cham

van der Velden, M. and M. B. Taylor (2017). Sustainability Hotspots Analysis of the Mobile Phone Lifecycle. Oslo. University of Oslo/SMART, pp. 82.

van der Velden, M. (2016) Design as Regulation: Opportunities and limitations for sustainable mobile phone design. In: Abdelnour-Nocera J., Strano M., Ess C., Van der Velden M., Hrachovec H. (eds) Culture, Technology, Communication. Common World, Different Futures. CaTaC 2016. IFIP Advances in Information and Communication Technology, vol 490. Springer, Cham.