Interview
At MWC this year, we spoke to Georgiann Reigle, founder and CEO of Kingfisher to discuss sustainability in the mobile market
Georgiann notes that what is so interesting at Mobile World Congress this year is all the innovation, which is fantastic and is exciting is going to push us forward as a society as communities. However, there’s a side effect of this innovation. Every time we want to upgrade our devices and access into the latest best technology, the old technology is still left.
The GSMA has estimated that in 2023, over 5.3 billion phones ended up in drawers and landfills. An interesting tension therefore develops, and so the industry must to find ways to continue to drive innovation and growth and find ways to get those 5 billion devices back in circulation, instead of ending up in the drawers and landfills so that they’re being used by other customers.
There is an interesting dichotomy between wanting the new devices with the new technology and wanting to become sustainable at the same time, and the consumer has got stuck in the middle of this. But should consumers be more involved in order to drive a circular mobile device economy?
Yes, says Georgiann, and for this, education is paramount. Many customers don’t know for example, how much carbon is involved in the manufacture of a device, or that the devices that are sitting in their drawer can actually be used and have value.
Kingsfisher launched a launch an initiative at the end of last year called World Phone Amnesty, which is all about bringing attention to the idea of every time you get a new phone, you hand in your old one–what they call the one for one. For Kingfisher, the end goal is to increase the circularity metric, which is how many new device sales are accompanied by a return device.
Hear Georgiann’s full insights in our interview below: