Design for Living in the Doughnut...mobile phones. The PCBs are collected and stored, and then sold in bulk to middlemen who ship the PCBs to recycling facilities abroad (India, China),

RSD6 Relating Systems Thinking and Design 2017 working paper. www.systemic-design.net

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Design for Living in the Doughnut

Working Paper

Maja van der Velden

Associated Professor

Department of Informatics, University of Oslo

“How do we love all the children of all species for all time” – William McDonough (2005)

Living in the Doughnut Doughnuts are baked, fried, sold, bought, and eaten. How did the doughnut end up as a metaphor

for sustainable living for all species? And if the doughnut can be such a hospitable place, how to

design for living in the doughnut?

The Doughnut is the conception of economist Kate Raworth (Raworth, 2012) and forms the main

inspiration for this working paper. The Doughnut enables a new way of engaging with approaches in

systems thinking found in software engineering, systems development, design (Checkland & Poulter,

2010; Jackson, 1991; Sevaldson, 2011), which conceptualize a system as open and adaptable. The

Doughnut is based on new insights from the Earth sciences, which show that the largest system, our

planet, has boundaries that set limits to the planet’s ability to adapt to changes. Research on these

boundaries culminated in the Planetary Boundaries framework, which consists of nine boundaries

(Figure 1) (Rockström et al., 2009; Steffen et al., 2015). These nine boundaries form the ecological

ceiling for my system thinking.

The Stockholm Resilience Centre visualized these boundaries in a circular form (see Figure 1), which

inspired Raworth to add a second layer and called it a doughnut (see Figure 2)1. Raworth argued that

adding social and economic aspects, could contribute to creating a more holistic perspective. On the

basis of governments' priorities for Rio+20, Raworth, developed the 11 dimensions of the Social

Foundation, which, after the publication of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), extended to

12 social dimensions that together form the minimum global social standards (see Figure 2)

1 While doughnuts are not considered a particularly healthy or sustainable food product, as a metaphor, the

doughnut has a globally recognisable shape. Wikipedia describes different types of doughnuts found in 96

countries.


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(Raworth, 2017, p. 255). These twelve dimensions form the social foundation for my systems

thinking.

The space between the ecological ceiling and the social foundation is called the safe and just space

for humanity as well as the regenerative and distributed economy. It is in this space where I locate a

design for living that sustains “all children of all species for all times” (McDonough, 2005).

Figure 1. Planetary Boundaries

Figure 2. The Doughnut with its shortfalls and overshoots


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The Mobile Phone Lifecycle

This working paper focuses on one of the most popular consumer technologies, the mobile phone.

There are about 4.43 billion mobile phone users on the planet, that is 60% of the total population

(eMarketer, 2017). About 1.5 billion new mobile phones are produced every year.

The mobile phone is the most used consumer electronics on the planet. It is often described as a

technology that enabled millions of people to bridge the digital divide, providing them access to

communication and information. Together with other Information and Communication Technologies

(ICT), they are positively associated with several of the social dimensions of the Doughnut. For

example, the Sustainable Development Goals mention the role of mobile phones and other ICTs in

healthcare, banking, access to market prices, etc. On the other hand, ICTs are also associated with

privacy violations, surveillance, and the new attention economy (Keen, 2017).

The mobile phone is one of the case studies in the SMART project. Sustainable Market Actors for

Responsible Trade or SMART is a Horizon2020-financed research project that seeks to advance

understanding on how non-development policies and regulations reinforce or undermine

development policies. We study the barriers and drivers for market actors' contribution to the

Sustainable Development Goals within planetary boundaries, with the aim of achieving Policy

Coherence for Development. We analyse the regulatory complexity within which European market

actors operate, both the private sector and the public sector in its many market roles with a focus

especially on international supply chains of products sold in Europe.

In SMART we study the environmental and social sustainability in the lifecycle of the mobile phone:

from the mining and production of materials to the repair, recycling, and disposal at the end of the

life of the phone. This working paper is in particular inspired by the fact that in Norway, a country of

5 million inhabitants and a mobile phone density of 97% of 16-65 years old, two million new phones

enter the market each year (Elektronikkbransjen, 2017). Norwegian mobile phones services

providers, as providers in other European countries, offer mobile phone subscriptions that enable

the customer to “swap” or “svitsj” their one year-old mobile phone for a new one, every year. So my

initial question is: what happens with these one-year old phones and other second-hand phones in

Norway? This question took me to Ghana, a country that imports a large amount of second hand

phones. In Ghana, the gently-used phones from Norway and other European countries may have an

extended second life, but what happens when also these mobile phones stop working?

Regulatory Ecology

The fieldtrip to Ghana inspired a reflection on the role of design in the End of Life phase of mobile

phones as well as in a the role of design in developing alternative scenarios for the unsustainability

found in that phase. I conceptualise this role of design as regulation: the design of the mobile phone

plays a regulatory role in all lifecycle phases of the mobile phone: Manufacturing, Transportation,

Use, and End of Life.

The concept of Regulatory Ecology is central to this reflection on the regulatory role of design. This

concept is based on a systemic and polycentric understanding of regulation regulation (Sjåfjell &

Taylor, 2015; van der Velden, 2006; Velden, 2016) and inspired by the work of Lawrence Lessig (1998,

1999). Lessig describes four modes of regulation that directly and indirectly regulate behaviour: law,

social norms, architecture, and markets (1998). Julia Black (2001) developed the notion of decentred


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regulation; regulation in which not all the control to regulate lies with the state. Black also discusses

the role of technology in regulation, which overlaps with Lessig’s notion of architecture as regulation.

In the SMART project, regulatory ecology is used to analyse the regulatory mix of law, social norms,

architecture, and markets that maintains an unsustainable impact in the lifecycle of the mobile

phone. Architecture as mode of regulation (not to be confused with the discipline architecture) is

about how nature, design, materials, the built environment, etc. regulate behaviour, or in our case,

unsustainable behaviour. This working paper will focus on the design of scenarios for a more

sustainable End of Life phase. A simplified regulatory ecology analysis will enable a better

understanding of the regulatory role of design and interactions between design and other modes of

regulation.

The Life and Death of Mobile Phones in Ghana Ghana, a country of 28.5 million inhabitants, has 36.5 million mobile phone subscriptions (National

Communications Authority, 2017). GSMA mentions that there are 18.9 unique subscribers, resulting

in a penetration rate of 66.8%, the highest in Western Africa (GSMA, 2017). These different sets of

numbers are not necessarily contradicting. Many of the people we interviewed and observed in

Accra owned more than one mobile phone: a touch phone and a non-touch phone. The non-touch

phone was perceived as having a much longer battery time than the touch phone. Many people

bought their mobile phones second hand or ‘inherited’ their mobile phone from a relative. Many

used phones are imported from Europe, North America, and China.

Repairing mobile phones

In order to address the question of what happens when mobile phones stop working in Ghana, I

started my research at the Circle in Accra. This is an area with a high concentration of mobile phone

importers, sellers, and repairers. Many of them sell used phones or repair phones from small tables

on the sidewalks (see Figure 3 and 4). The area is filled with mobile phone shops, sometimes filling up

buildings four stories high, selling spare parts (mostly screens), new mobile phones, and SIM cards.

Software-related repairs, such as flashing and unlocking, and specialised repairs, such as IC repair,

takes also place in these shops.

In interviews with repairers it became clear that some mobile phones were much easier to repair

than others. In particular the use of glue in the newer models of popular brands, such as Samsung

and iPhone, has complicated the work of the repairers (see Figure 5). Several mentioned the danger

of replacing glued batteries and told stories of how mobile phone batteries “exploded”.2 It also

became clear that mobile phones can be repaired several times before they become condemned

phones, that is, mobile phones that no longer can be used or whose repair is too expensive in related

to buying another used mobile phone. In these cases, the mobile phones end up in the spare-parts

bag of the repairer, and will be used in the repair of other phones, or they are sold to recyclers at

Agbogbloshie (see below).

2 The call back program of the Samsung Note 7, because of battery problems, made the problem of gluing the battery extra clear: if consumers could have changed the battery themselves, it would have saved Samsung about 900 million dollar (Team, 2016).


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Figure 3. Mobile phone repair on the sidewalk at the Circle. Photo: SMART/Maja van der Velden

Figure 4. Mobile phone repair at the Circle, Accra. Photo: SMART/Maja van der Velden


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Figure 5. Glued battery in the Samsung S 8 Photo: iFixit

Recycling mobile phones

There are hundreds of young men going around in and around Accra scavenging or buying up the

condemned mobile phones. They bring these phones to Agbogbloshie, a large scrap metal yard in the

middle of Accra. Agbogbloshie is renowned in Western media as one of the most polluted areas in

the world as a result of Western countries dumping their e-waste. In fact, Agbogbloshie is a much

more diverse place and an important provider of jobs. In Agbogbloshie, everything with metal is

recycled: cars, heavy machinery, bicycles, metal roofs, kitchen appliances, and consumer electronics,

such as air conditioners, fans, computers, and mobile phones. Young men, mainly from the North of

Ghana, where the combination of unemployment and climate change is having an impact on the

livelihoods of communities, have found a job here, scavenging and dissembling metals and burning

cables for copper.

Mobile phone recycling consists of taking, more literally breaking, the motherboard or PCB out of the

mobile phones. The PCBs are collected and stored, and then sold in bulk to middlemen who ship the

PCBs to recycling facilities abroad (India, China), where valuable metals are recovered (e.g., gold,

copper, silver) (see Figure 6). Batteries, when in good shape, will be sold on the second-hand battery

market at the Circle (see Figure 7). The leftover parts of the mobile phone get dumped on the

household waste mount next to the scrap metal yard or are burned (see Figure 8).

Figure 6. Recycling mobile phone at Agbogbloshie. Photos: SMART/Alice Frantz Schneider


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Figure 7. Selling second hand batteries at the Circle. Photo: SMART/Maja van der Velden

Figure 8. Burning e-waste near Agbogbloshie. Photo: SMART/Maja van der Velden

Impacts

The unsustainable recycling of mobile phones and other electronics, in Ghana, Nigeria, India, China,

and many more countries around the world, results in a wide variety of social and environmental


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impacts. In the SMART project we have mapped the impacts we found in the End of Life phase

against the Doughnut: the nine Planetary Boundaries, the ecological ceiling of the mobile phone

system, and the twelve social dimensions of the Social Foundations (see Table 1) (van der Velden &

Taylor, 2017).

Table 1. Impacts on the Planetary Boundaries and Social Foundation

Planetary Boundaries Impacts

Climate Change CO2 emissions

Introduction of Novel Entities Hazardous materials/Ecotoxicity

Atmospheric aerosol loading Particulate matter

Social Dimensions Impacts

Food Food chain pollution

Income & Work

Low wages Precarious work Unsafe work

Water & Sanitation

Drinking water pollution/Lack of access to drinking water Poor sanitation

Health

Reduced health/Reproductive health hazards Hazardous materials/Human toxicity Lack of information about hazardous materials

Education Child labour Low literacy

Energy Lack of clean energy

Peace & Justice Conflict Corruption Illicit trade

Housing Living in slums

Take-back programs

In order to tackle some of the negative impacts associated with unused mobile phones, companies

offer take-back programs, in which consumers receive a discount on their new phone when bringing

back their old phone or they receive a small sum of money. The collection of unused mobile phones

has, until now, not been very successful. Media continue to report large numbers of unused mobile

phones. In Australia, 23 million phones are laying unused in people’s home (Cormack, 2017), while

“the average Brit has more than two unused phones at home, and 1 in 10 are holding on to five or

more working or damaged devices” (Munbodh, 2016). Already in 2012, Norwegian operator Telenor

mentioned that there were more than 8 million mobile phones laying around, unused, in people’s

homes (Hohe, 2012). It promoted a take-back system, which pays sport clubs a small amount of

money per collected mobile phone. About 75% of these phones could be refurbished and were sent

to countries Africa and Asia (ibid). But the situation hasn’t improved (Telenor, 2016). Two large

mobile phone services providers in Norway now offer subscriptions that include the possibility to

receive a new mobile phone every 12 months. They justify this service as a contribution to a more

sustainable mobile phone lifecycle: mobile phones will not remain unused in people’s homes and

offices, and the one-year old phones will have a second life in countries where people can’t afford an

expensive new phone. The main issue with these take-back programmes is that they transfer mobile

phone recycling from countries with access to sustainable electronics recycling facilities to countries

without access to sustainable electronics recycling facilities.


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3. Regulatory Ecology Design can directly or indirectly influence sustainable behaviour. Design, as a mode of regulation, is

more and more used to strengthen law. Lessig used the example of Digital Rights Management

(DRM), law-based regulation that is enforced through the design of digital products (DVDs; digital

movies and music) (1999). Law-based regulation, such mandatory use seatbelts in the car, can be

enforced through design; the car will not start without the seatbelts fastened or on-going beeping

sounds will be heard while driving without a seatbelt.

In our research in the SMART project, we are in particular concerned with understanding

unsustainable behaviour in the lifecycle of the mobile phone. One of the impacts in the End of Life,

Human toxicity, often affects other social impacts, such as Reduced health, Drinking water pollution,

and Food chain pollution (see table 1). Materials related to Human toxicity are often also toxic to soil,

water, air, animals, etc. (Ecotoxicity). We can look at the regulatory ecology sustaining such an

undesired impact and design a new regulatory mix (Figure 9).

In order to address the impacts in the End of Life phase, we can design several interventions. We can

design for recycling, making it safer to open mobile phones; we can replace hazardous materials with

non-toxic ones, decreasing the toxicity of the phones; or we can opt for a modular design, making the

phone easier to take apart.

We can also look at one of the components of the mobile phone containing the most hazardous

materials, the battery. The battery has a shorter lifespan than the mobile phone itself, especially

when the mobile phone is repaired, thus reaching the End of Life phase earlier. Mobile phone

batteries contains hazardous materials, such as lithium and cobalt.3 When a mobile phone battery is

burned, toxic fumes, such as hydrogen fluoride, can be released, which is toxic for both people and

environment. Letting batteries decompose around informal e-waste recycling sites is associated with

a range of social and environmental impacts (Kang, Chen, & Ogunseitan, 2013; Leyssens, Vinck, Van

Der Straeten, Wuyts, & Maes, 2017). On the other hand, when batteries are industrially recycled, the

extraction rate of cobalt is very high. The use of recycled cobalt in batteries can contribute to

3 The majority of cobalt for mobile phone batteries is mined in DR Congo and is in itself related to serious social and envronmental impacts, such as child labour, forced labour, unsafe work, human toxicity, ecotoxicity, etc. (van der Velden & Taylor, 2017).

markets

law social norms

architecture

design

Figure 9. Regulatory mix (ecology) of, e.g., hazardous materials in mobile phones.


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minimizing the social impacts found in cobalt mining, such as child labor, forced labor, unsafe work,

reduced health, etc. (Amnesty International, 2016).

We can look at the regulatory mix that maintains the unsustainable recycling of batteries and design

new scenarios based on new regulatory mixes of design, law, markets, and social norms (see Figure

1). For example, an intervention based on the interaction of law (mandatory take-back system of

batteries) and markets (companies selling mobile phones and spare parts putting a deposit on the

battery) can result in more batteries being recycled in a sustainable manner. However, to strengthen

this intervention, an intervention through design is required too: a deposit on batteries will only

work if it is possible for consumers to take out the battery. The Fairphone 2 has for example a

modular design and enables the replacement of the battery in a few second (Figure 10).

Figure 10. Easy removable of the battery with the Fairphone 2

Designing scenarios

A systemic and decentred understanding of regulation also enables the development of scenarios

based on design interventions. We can design two scenarios based on a mobile phone design with a

removable battery and use a regulatory ecology analysis to evaluate the possible impacts:

Scenario 1: Design for repair

Scenario 1, represent partly the situation in Norway, where politicians and civil society are

discussing options to legislate lower or 0% VAT (now 25%) on repair and spare parts, as well

as deposits on batteries. Scenario 1 is an intervention based on the interactions of three

modes of regulation: law (lower VAT, mandatory take-back system), market (deposit), and

design (removable battery). The weak point in this scenario is the lack of a repair culture in

Norway (social norm), which might undermine the expected positive effects.


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Scenario 2: Design for recycling

Scenario 2 represents situations in which there is no legislation to support the recycling of

batteries, e.g., Ghana. In this scenario, consumers are able to take out the battery easily

(design), but there are no incentives to participate in battery collection programmes. In

countries such as Ghana, with a well-developed repair culture (social norm), but that lack of

battery collection systems and sustainable recycling system, removable batteries may result

in even more batteries ending up on waste dumps or being burned.

At the moment, the latest models of popular mobile phone brands don’t have a removable battery

(phone and/or battery is glued):

Scenario 3: Design for business as usual

We can also design a scenario based on the current situation, in which the majority of mobile

phones have a non-removable battery. Here we can envision a regulatory intervention in the

form of a take-back system based on a deposit on the whole mobile phone (law and

markets). If all mobile phones sold in Norway would have a deposit that encourages the

return of the phone, the success rate of the take-back systems will increase. This scenario has

two major setbacks: we transfer the responsibility to recycle the mobile phones to the

countries that buy these used mobile phones, and, secondly, we may create an unsustainable

circular economy in Norway. If the incentive to “swap”/”svitsj” is based on deposits related

to the age and state of the mobile phone, it strengthens the premature returns of mobile

phones. If the incentive is based on a fixed deposit, not reflecting how consumers perceive

the value of their phones, the phones may remain unused in people’s homes and offices.

4. Concluding Remarks Design plays a central role in the sustainability of the lifecycle of a product – some mention that up to

70-80% of the sustainability of a product’s lifecycle is established in the design phase (European

Commission, 2017; Müller, 2013). This paper presented some of the unsustainable impacts in the End

of Life of the mobile phone and discussed a possible regulatory role of design in countering some of

these impacts. Regulation was understood as systemic and decentred, represented by the concept of

regulatory ecology. Examples showed that a regulatory intervention via one mode of regulation re-

shaped the regulatory ecology, as the different modes of regulation can both strengthen and

undermine each other. The success of an intervention is therefore dependent on the support of

other modes of regulation. When designing for living in the doughnut, it is important to consider that

such sustainment (Fry, 2011) is systemic and the effect of a regulatory mix rather than the result of

one mode of regulation, such as law or design.

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Documents

Design for Living in the Doughnut...mobile phones. The PCBs are collected and stored, and then sold in bulk to middlemen who ship the PCBs to recycling facilities abroad (India, China),