Environment - Small Surfaces

Posts Tagged: environment

concept, design, environment, mobile, nokia, power, recycled, remade, sustainable, upcycled — 1 Comment
5
Mar 08

The sustainable mobile future?

Nokia ships 1 million new handsets every day; along with the clothing industry, the mobile phone business is the pinnacle of continuous conspicuous consumption: people buy new phones just to have something new.

Nokia has released a concept that is at least heading in the right direction here – a handset that’s made completely from recycled materials.

“In remade, recycled materials from metal cans, plastic bottles, and car tyres are used beautifully; whilst helping reduce landfill and preserving natural resources. The concept also addresses cleaner engine technologies, and energy efficiency through power saving graphics.”

One of the major challenges for the mobile handset business on the sustainability front is to shift people’s thinking about phones from being disposable fashion objects to something that’s to be kept and treasured (Nokia’s Vertu subbrand, perversely, is probably the only company that does this).

I’m glad that Nokia, as the biggest handset manufacturer, is engaging in this conversation. Hopefully more good stuff will come out of this.

Link: Nokia remade (grignani.org)
Link: Remade concept (youtube.com)

cell, environment, mobile, phones, recycling, reuse, waste — No Comments
14
Jan 08

Where phones go when they’re discarded

“Reuse, we are told, is as green a virtue as recycling. But with e-waste all the old ecological dogmas start to become ambiguous. Cellphones represent only a part of the world’s e-waste problem. But they are a key to understanding how complicated it is. They also embody the kind of high-tech products that we will be throwing away more of: easier to upgrade than repair, increasingly disposable-seeming but also deeply personal. As governments around the world, from the European Union to New York City, propose or pass laws to require the recycling of e-waste, there’s little consensus about what recycling actually means. No matter how close our relationship with our phones has become — how faithfully we keep them with us, how we hold them to our faces and whisper into them — we rarely wonder where they go when they die.”

Link: The Afterlife of Cellphones (nytimes.com)

cellphone, charging, cultures, emergingmarkets, environment, mobile, poverty, repair, uganda — No Comments
15
Jan 07

Phone charging practices in Uganda

“Uganda is a country coping with a severe energy crisis resulting in frequent power cuts. In addition, access to mains electricity in rural locations is limited. Given that mobile phones require power, and access to power can be unpredictable – how do people keep their mobile phones and other electrical devices charged?”

Link: Power Up: Street Charging Services in Uganda (janchipchase.com)

cell, cellphone, environment, everyware, future, handheld, lifestyle, mobile, phone, society — No Comments
8
Dec 06

The phone of the future

Two interesting articles about mobile phones from the always-must-read Economist. The first, interestingly, predicts divergence rather than convergence and uses cars as the developmental analogue. I’m not convinced by the divergence argument here – unlike cars, mobile phones are general computing platforms than can adapt (or be adapted) to user habits in a way that cars just can’t.

“Last, and perhaps most important, the history of the car suggests that the technology industry’s current mania for “converged” devices is misguided. Nobody asks what the ideal shape for a car is, or predicts that eventually all cars will look identical. Instead there are different models for different uses: roomy people-carriers for school runs, sports cars for those suffering mid-life crises, small cars for urban dwellers.”

Link: Phones are the new cars (economist.com)

“And yet speculation about the future of phones persists, and no wonder. The telephone has changed beyond recognition since its invention in 1876, and is now both the most personal, most social and most rapidly evolving technological device. So to imagine the phone of the future is also to imagine the future of consumer technology, and its personal and social impact. What mobile phones will look like in a year or two is easy to guess: they will be slimmer and probably will let you watch television on the move. But what about ten or 15 years from now?”

Link: The phone of the future (economist.com)

design, environment, mobile, podcast, space — No Comments
13
Jul 06

Designing space for creativity

Completely off topic, but a great podcast about designing space (corporate and metropolitan) to encourage creativity.

“How can the design of physical space and public policy encourage creativity and high performance? We put that question to our guests Clive Wilkinson and Steven J. Tepper. Clive is principal with Clive Wilkinson Architects based in Los Angeles. He has many significant projects to his credit including the new headquarters for Google, where bringing employees together at the right time and in the right space was crucial. The challenge was to use the work environment to encourage creativity.

“Researching how to use the urban environment to encourage creativity is part of the work of Steven J. Tepper, assistant professor of sociology at Vanderbilt University. Steven is associate director of the Curb Center for Art, Enterprise, and Public Policy, where he has been documenting what makes cities creative. The Curb Center is a research center dedicated to designing a new roadmap for cultural policy in America.”

Link: Encouraging Creativity By Design (smartcityradio.com)

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