Your iPhone Is NOT Sustainable
Introduction: The Awkward Truth No One Wants to Admit
Last week I was on the Tube, and a woman was loudly berating her mate about single-use plastics. You know the speech: turtles, oceans, microplastics, the whole lot. All the while, she was scrolling on a shiny new iPhone 15 Pro, probably fresh out of the box. I couldn’t help but smirk. We all love to believe we’re saving the planet with reusable cups and tote bags, but here’s the uncomfortable reality: your iPhone is probably one of the most environmentally damaging things you own.
That’s not a popular thing to say. Apple’s marketing team have done a brilliant job making their products look clean, green, and almost morally superior. The truth, though? The smartphone in your pocket is built on the back of mining, massive energy consumption, and a throwaway culture that contradicts every “save the planet” post you’ve ever liked on Instagram.
Let’s talk about why.
The Myth of the “Eco-friendly” iPhone
Apple loves to talk about its “carbon-neutral” products, recycled aluminium cases, and commitment to green energy. It all sounds impressive — but it’s also very selective.
Recycled Aluminium Isn’t Saving the World
Yes, your iPhone’s casing may be made from recycled aluminium. That’s nice. But that accounts for only a small part of the phone’s overall environmental footprint. According to Apple’s own Environmental Progress Report, around 80% of an iPhone’s lifetime carbon emissions come from production — not the casing, not charging it, not even shipping. The energy needed to extract rare earth minerals, process them, and manufacture the chips dwarfs any gains made by recycling a bit of metal.
The Annual Upgrade Trap
Then there’s the issue of constant upgrading. Apple announces a new iPhone every autumn, and we collectively rush to get rid of the perfectly good one we bought last year. That behaviour fuels more mining, more emissions, more production lines roaring into action. Sustainability isn’t just about what something is made of — it’s about how often we replace it. And Apple’s business model depends on us replacing it far too often.
The Dirty Secret Behind Your Screen: Rare Earth Minerals
Crack open an iPhone (not literally, unless you fancy voiding your warranty), and you’ll find more than 30 different elements. That includes gold, tungsten, lithium, cobalt, and rare earth minerals like neodymium. These don’t come from a magical, eco-friendly supply chain.
Cobalt and Child Labour
Around 70% of the world’s cobalt comes from the Democratic Republic of Congo. Amnesty International has reported multiple times that cobalt mines in the DRC use child labour and have unsafe conditions. Cobalt is what makes your battery work. Without it, no selfies, no Instagram stories. If you think banning plastic straws is the hill to die on, but you’re funding child labour with your battery, something’s off.
Lithium, Gold, and Tin
Lithium mining is another environmental nightmare. It takes around 500,000 gallons of water to produce one tonne of lithium, and much of that happens in arid regions like Chile’s Atacama Desert, where water is already scarce. Gold mining releases toxic waste and mercury into rivers. Tin and tungsten are classified as conflict minerals, often linked to human rights abuses. Every swipe of your screen is powered by this messy global supply chain.
Environmental Devastation in Numbers
A 2023 report from the Global E-waste Monitor estimated that smartphones contribute to more than 50 million tonnes of e-waste every year worldwide. Most of that is not properly recycled — it ends up in landfills or is shipped to developing countries where workers burn components in open pits to recover tiny scraps of metal. The carbon footprint? Making one iPhone emits roughly 70–80 kg of CO₂ before you even touch it. Multiply that by the 225 million iPhones Apple sold in 2023, and you’ve got the emissions of a small country.
The Carbon Footprint No One Likes to Talk About
Apple proudly tells you their offices run on renewable energy. Great — but your phone’s biggest environmental impact isn’t in the Apple Park solar panels.
Manufacturing Is the Real Culprit
Most iPhones are built in vast Chinese factories that consume enormous amounts of electricity, much of it from coal. Even with some solar and wind thrown into the mix, the sheer scale of production wipes out most of those “green” bragging rights. According to Apple’s own data, manufacturing accounts for four-fifths of total iPhone emissions.
Power-Hungry Data Centres
Think about iCloud. Every time you back up your photos or stream Apple Music, a data centre somewhere is guzzling electricity to keep that going 24/7. These facilities require constant cooling, which burns even more energy. Sure, Apple says it uses renewable energy — but the demand is so relentless that it still strains the grid and indirectly relies on fossil fuels when renewable supply dips.
Repairability: Apple Doesn’t Want You to Fix It
Another big part of sustainability is repairability — and Apple has been dragged into court for how hard it makes fixing its products.
Right to Repair Battles
Independent repair shops have long complained that Apple locks down parts, software, and tools so only authorised centres can fix your phone — often at extortionate prices. If repairing your phone costs nearly as much as a new one, most people just buy new. That’s by design, and it’s wasteful.
What Happens to Old Phones
Those “trade-in” schemes sound responsible, but many old devices are simply recycled for parts or shipped abroad. A significant chunk never make it through proper recycling streams. Mountains of e-waste pile up in Ghana, India, and China, where informal workers, often children, dismantle them with bare hands. If we cared about the planet as much as we say we do, we’d fight harder to stop that.
Hypocrisy Hurts the Cause
And this is the part that stings. It’s not just that iPhones are bad for the planet — it’s that we pretend they aren’t.
Outrage Selectivity
People love to post about saving whales and banning plastic straws while tweeting it from a device that contributes more CO₂ and human suffering than an entire year’s worth of takeaway cups. The selective outrage makes environmentalism look trendy rather than serious.
Why This Matters
If we keep ignoring the elephant in the room — that our love affair with technology is a massive driver of emissions and waste — we weaken the entire argument for sustainability. It becomes performative rather than impactful. True environmentalism means facing uncomfortable truths, and this is one of them.
So, What’s the Solution?
Here’s the good news: there are things we can do. None of them are perfect, but they’re better than pretending the problem doesn’t exist.
Keep Your Phone Longer
The single biggest thing you can do to reduce your tech footprint is simple: stop upgrading every year. Use your phone for four or five years. Replace the battery instead of the whole device. Stretch its life until it actually can’t function.
Support Right to Repair
Push for laws that make phones easier and cheaper to fix. In the EU, new rules are coming in that will require companies to make parts available for longer and allow independent repair shops to operate freely. That’s progress worth supporting.
Be Honest About the Trade-offs
Finally, we need to stop pretending that tech is green. It’s not. It comes with a cost, and we need to be honest about that if we care about the future. The next time someone lectures you about saving the planet while showing you a TikTok on their new iPhone, remind them of the cobalt in their battery and the coal-powered factory that built it.