Need a new phone? A refurbished device is a greener\u00a0 option \u2013 and now, in an NZ first, you can buy one directly from One New Zealand.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Cast your mind back to 1994. IBM has just released what many consider to be the world\u2019s first ever \u201csmartphone\u201d \u2013 a clunky touchscreen device that most people dismissed as a novelty and nobody knew quite what to do with. It took another decade for BlackBerry to turn the concept into something the business world actually wanted, and even then the smartphone remained firmly the territory of executives and early adopters.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Then came the iPhone in 2007 and everything changed. A single device that could make calls, send emails, take photos and play music \u2013 all via a touchscreen \u2013 was a revolutionary concept that created a global cultural shift. The rest is history: today, it\u2019s estimated that around 70% of the global population owns a smartphone, long surpassing the humble PC in market share.\u00a0<\/p>\n
While the world has gained a lot from these advancements, there are costs to rapid growth. On an environmental level, manufacturing smartphones is a high energy, carbon-intensive process. From raw material extraction to the production of parts that make up your phone, manufacturing typically accounts for the majority of a device\u2019s lifecycle footprint. Higher-end phones with more internal storage are usually at the higher end of that scale.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Mining for the metals and minerals needed to make phones has also had a serious impact on natural ecosystems, leading to habitat destruction, soil erosion and water contamination. And while many of these valuable materials can be reused when phones reach their end of life cycles, most devices simply end up going to landfill anyway.<\/p>\n
But something is starting to shift. Cost of living pressures mean people are looking at ways to save money while also considering environmental impacts. In recent years, the assumption that you should upgrade your phone every year or two has started to lose its hold. Partly it\u2019s economic: new phones are expensive \u2013 especially when the small improvements between generations make shelling out for a new one increasingly hard to justify. Partly it\u2019s a cultural thing: there\u2019s a growing \u201cretrotech\u201d sensibility among people, especially Gen Z, who aren\u2019t particularly fussed about having the latest thing. Whatever the reason, people are holding onto their phones for longer \u2013 and when they do replace them, they\u2019re increasingly open to a different kind of \u201cnew\u201d.<\/p>\n
That\u2019s where refurbished phones come in. While it\u2019s not exactly a revolutionary idea \u2013 secondhand handsets have been around as long as the mobile phone \u2013 what has changed is the size and scale of the market. The global market for refurbished devices, already growing rapidly, is forecast to be worth over US$200 billion by 2033 (up from US$88 billion in 2025).<\/p>\n
One New Zealand\u2019s Nicky Preston, left, and The Lever Room\u2019s Rebecca Mills. (Supplied)<\/p>\n
In Aotearoa, refurbished phones have mostly been the domain of private resellers \u2013 fine if you trust them, but not always the most secure way to buy a phone. Now, decades after the first mobile phone user decided it was time for an upgrade, that\u2019s finally changing. One New Zealand has become the first mobile operator in New Zealand to sell refurbished phones directly to customers, bringing a level of quality assurance to the secondhand market that it has historically lacked, with a 24-month warranty.<\/p>\n
Nicky Preston, head of sustainability and corporate affairs at One New Zealand, says it\u2019s not just about offering customers a more affordable option \u2013 though it offers that too. It\u2019s about doing something that makes a real environmental difference.<\/p>\n
\u201cAs a business, we really want to look at ways of encouraging sustainability that are practical and make sense, like here, where cost and carbon savings go hand-in-hand,\u201d says Preston. \u201cWhile initiatives like planting trees are great, as a telco we can have greater impact by focusing on what\u2019s integral to our business. You can\u2019t make the most of a mobile plan without a smartphone, so we\u2019re helping extend the life of these phones.\u201d<\/p>\n
It\u2019s not just about e-waste: buying refurbished instead of brand new significantly cuts down on carbon emissions. (Photo: Getty Images)<\/p>\n
To quantify just how much of a difference it could make, One New Zealand commissioned independent strategy and technology company The Lever Room to crunch the numbers. Its results were striking: it found that, on average, buying a refurbished phone avoids 34kg of CO\u2082 emissions, representing 45% lower lifecycle emissions than an equivalent new device.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cWe hear a lot about e-waste being a huge environmental issue, but from a climate perspective, a big part of the opportunity comes earlier,\u201d says The Lever Room founder and CEO Rebecca Mills. \u201cKeeping devices in use for longer can reduce the need for new manufacturing \u2013 and that matters, because our modelling shows manufacturing is where most of a phone\u2019s carbon footprint actually sits.\u00a0\u201cRefurbishment helps shift the question from \u2018what do we do with old phones?\u2019 to \u2018how do we get more value and longer use from the phones already in circulation?\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n
For now, One New Zealand\u2019s scheme uses phones it has collected from its trade-in programme, as well as overseas markets. \u201cAs we grow and mature the scheme, our hope is to source more phones traded-in by our customers, refurbish them, and then resell them,\u201d says Preston.<\/p>\n
\u201cOur current scheme is still giving a second life to an old phone. This is a big step in creating that product circularity loop.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Need a new phone? A refurbished device is a greener\u00a0 option \u2013 and now, in an NZ first,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":432925,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[138,111,139,69,59119,221673,143],"class_list":["post-433224","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-business","tag-business","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-one-nz","tag-one-nz-refurbished-phone","tag-partners"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/433224","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=433224"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/433224\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/432925"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=433224"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=433224"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=433224"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}