Is the iPhone 4 a Step in the Green Direction?

iGadgetLife Staff

There is no doubt that the iPhone is a qualified success, with millions of the units now in the wild. But millions of anything can have an environmental impact, iPhone included. With the new iPhone 4 coming out, we should probably expect there to be millions of these on the street in a short amount of time.

So, maybe we should ask the question - does the new iPhone have a smaller ecological impact than its predecessors? Is the iPhone getting greener?

PVC Free Construction

To start addressing that question, let's first look at the construction materials used, particularly in the area of PVC containing materials. PVC is shorthand for polyvinyl chloride, a vinyl polymer that is a favorite of manufacturers for three reasons - it is cheap, durable, and easy to assemble. What's more, it can be made more flexible through the addition of various plasticizers. With this added, PVC can be used in clothing, upholstery, tubing, action figures, water beds, and even soft flexible electrical wiring. PVC has historically been used in a lot of products.

However, PVC has been found to be a bit of a public health hazard. The carcinogenicity of vinyl chloride has been noted, leaching DEHP from PVC is an area of concern, and dioxin by-products from PVC's manufacturing process are an environmental hazard. Finally, PVC is currently not recycle friendly due to the cost of processing. So making a whole bunch of PVC is not exactly a good idea. Especially when we are talking about many millions of units.

In the construction of the iPhone 4, Apple has taken note of dangers of PVC, and the new iPhone is PVC free. In fact, even its headphones and USB cable is PVC free. So, when it comes to common PVC issues, the new iPhone is clean.

Bromine Free Circuit Boards

Bromine is one of those manufacturing chemicals that is used in a lot of products, but when they transport the chemical itself they do so in steel tanks lined with lead. That alone should be a good reason to not use it in personal items, but the fact that it is toxic and can cause chemical burns is another great reason. You will often find bromine used as a flame retardent in epoxy, the kind used in circuit boards.

You probably know that the new iPhone has a circuit board, so it is not unreasonable to suspect that it incorporates the toxic bromine in its construction as many products with circuit boards do. But that is not the case, since the iPhone 4 is bromine free. This is definitely a step in the right direction.

Mercury Free LCD Display

Mercury, an element used in everything from thermometers to dental fillings, is now known to be a toxic pollutant. Mercury vapor impairs the central nervous system, creating delirium, violent muscle spasms, and loss of memory. This is not an element you would want to be exposed to either in your phone or in your home.

A lot of LCD monitors use a mercury vapor lamp as the backlighting for the display. This means that mercury is present in the device, and will eventually end up in the landfills. However, the latest iPhone uses LED backlighting, which removes the mercury from the equation. There is no mercury in the new iPhone display.

Arsenic Free Display Glass

Arsenic can sometimes be found in natural ground waters, and it increases the chances of skin cancer. A mild exposure to arsenic can cause skin ulcerations and injury to mucous membranes. A more concentrated dose of arsenic is an especially potent poison, creating death from multi-system organ failure and severe hemorrhaging. Arsenic is something that you want to steer clear from.

Arsenic has been used in optical glass (and display panels), ending up in landfill when the product is discarded. Recently, though, manufacturers have been moving to arsenic free glass production. The new iPhone incorporates such glass in its display, making it arsenic free.

Recycled Material Use

When it comes to the construction of millions of a given product, you are going to need a lot of construction material. That material will have to be gathered, transported, processed in bulk, transported again, then finally used in the specific manufacturing process.

For most consumer grade products, a lot of the material bulk needed is in the actual packaging itself. After all, think about the size of the box the iPhone comes in as compared to the iPhone itself. But the majority of the iPhone 4 packaging material is post-consumer recycled fiberboard and biobased material. This saves a lot of the natural resources of the planet as well as saving valuable landfill space.

Efficient Power Supply

A lot of consumer electronic goods use a power supply that is wasteful at best. These "wall warts" are often found in homes leeching power from the power grid, often using more energy than required due to being poorly suited to the product paired with.

The iPhone 4 ships with an efficient power supply that is designed to match the energy requirements of the phone itself. In this way the net energy used is held to a minimum. By itself it may not have a huge impact on your power bill, but when you multiply it by millions of iPhones in the field it can have a considerable impact over the lifetime of the product.

Retinal Display

Every day there are thousands of tons of printed material that heads for local landfills. If only people were comfortable with reading this material on a digital display, then such loss could be avoided or at least reduced.

Enter the so-called retinal display on the iPhone 4. The idea is that by packing a lot of pixels in a limited amount of room then the eye cannot discern the difference between a pixellated display and a drawn line. The end effect is that the user is more comfortable reading on the small display, forgoing the printed material. The end result - less processing, printing, and disposing of printed media.

When you look at the green advances in the new Apple flagship product, it is easy to see how it is indeed becoming a more green product. Of course, it could strongly be argued that slowing down the new iPhone release schedule to once every couple years would be an even greener practice, since it would save the device turnover.

For that to happen, you will have to get the smart phone market to slow down in general. From what I've seen, that is not going to happen any time soon, and competition for the iPhone from the Android market is just heating up. So, the best we can do at this point is hope that the iPhone 5 follows the green trend.

Note: This is a guest post from the guys over at iGadgetLife, which collects product information and reviews of different products ranging from pc audio speakers to internal and external hard drives.