• Residential Customers
  • SME
  • Corporate Business
  • About Swisscom
  • Online Shop

Eco points. How eco-friendly is the Swisscom mobile phone portfolio?

In launching its eco points initiative, Swisscom is the first supplier in Switzerland to offer its customers information about the ecological footprint of its mobile phone portfolio.

Eco points in brief

The mobile phones offered by various manufacturers do not just differ in terms of design and performance, but also regarding their ecological footprint. How much power does a device consume? What raw materials are used for its manufacture? Until now, customers have found it hard to obtain this type of information.

Swisscom is creating more transparency:

we are the first supplier in Switzerland to introduce the eco points.


enlarge

All devices in our range will be assessed and compared with one another. The more points a device has, the better rating it achieves. Thanks to the eco points, customers will in future be able to include ecological considerations in their decision to purchase.

Where to find the eco points

We are currently providing information on each mobile phone's eco points in the Swisscom online shop.

The Swisscom shops and the Swisscom shop magazine are to follow in autumn 2011.

Assessment by myclimate

Swisscom has appointed the independent foundation myclimate to carry out the assessments. ETH Zurich's spin-off company is now an international leader on CO2 compensation and climate education. It has gained extensive skills in creating lifecycle assessment analyses of products.

For detailed information go here.

Assessment criteria: what is assessed?

The eco points are produced from three equally weighted assessment criteria:

Assessment criteria

Description
Low power consumption For this criterion, the electricity consumption of the charger and the mobile in standby mode are measured. The less electricity consumed, the more points the device will receive.
Low manufacturing energy This refers to the device’s grey energy. This factor is mainly determined by the size of the screen and the battery, as well as the chips required for the computing power. The distance required to transport the device is less important. The lighter the battery, the smaller the screen and the lower the computing power of the device, the more points it gets.
Responsible selection of raw materials The suppliers have different production methods to choose from that require different amounts of energy. They can also exclude toxic materials from the production process. If the manufacturer uses recycling materials, he does not use toxic materials and if he uses environmental management to increase efficiency the mobile phone receives more points.

Significance of the eco points

Swisscom's choice of mobile phones is extensive and therefore representative of the Swiss mobile phone market. This also applies to the assessment of the mobile phones with eco points.

If a model is given 4.5 or 5.0 points, it is a very advanced product in environmental terms. In other words, comparably less energy was used in producing it and the power consumption in standby mode is very low. In selecting the raw materials, the most eco-friendly materials currently available were chosen. A model with 1 point on the other hand is a poor product in ecological terms.

The assessment of Swisscom’s mobile phone portfolio has revealed an average score of 3.25 points out of a possible 5.0. This corresponds with a rating of satisfactory. One point is given to cells phones where the supplier did not send any information.

The high-flyers with 4.0 points are comparatively simple devices from Sony Ericsson and Nokia. As expected, smartphones can be found at the lower end of the scale with 2.5-3.5 points. This is due to the higher amount of resources required for the production of the devices and their higher power consumption while in use.

For reasons of simplicity and clarity, we have however decided not to introduce a separate smartphone category. Customers interested in buying a smartphone can simply find and select a model with the highest possible number of points using the portfolio summary.

Setting limits: what is not assessed?

Recycling the devices Whether a device is recycled after usage cannot be assessed at the time of purchase. However, with Solidarcomm Swisscom offers a second life to old, fully functioning devices and ensures eco-friendly recycling for broken devices.

Go to Solidarcomm

Working conditions in production facilities Due to a lack of comparable data, this point cannot today be taken into account in the assessment yet. Today however, Swisscom already requires its suppliers by contract to adhere to the ecological and social requirements.

To the procurement Policy (PDF, 569 kB)

Using rare earths Due to a lack of comparable data, this point also cannot be taken into account yet. As soon as data is available however, we will check whether it can be included in the assessment criteria.