Are smartphones green?

Thanks to consumer and industry-group pressure, our portable devices have gotten more 'green'. But there is still a long way to go -- particularly as they become even more affordable, more disposable.

The site TreeHugger (which is run by a bunch o tree huggers, I have no doubt) has an interesting discussion on O2's 'rigging' of the scoring to make smartphones seem as 'green' as the lowly feature phone:

Speaking to BusinessGreen.com, James Taplin from Forum for the Future, which produced the rating scheme for O2, admitted that alongside criteria covering the corporate responsibility of the manufacturer, raw materials and manufacturing processes, toxic substances, packaging and logistics, and environmental impacts during the use and disposal of the phone, the organisation introduced criteria based on the functionality of the device.

This is not to minimize the importance of functionality when analyzing the impact of electronics. As we showed when looking at how much energy a gadget minimalist could save, if one or two devices can accomplish all your tasks rather than a dozen, then those few devices are considered pretty darn green over single-function devices.

But it is up to the user to make it so...not the manufacturer.

Because it's up to the user to make full use of the functionality of a smart phone and decide to not buy other devices nor replace their phones every time they renew their contract with their carrier, it seems that O2 is giving points to phones that don't earn them on their own.