Back Market Mine My Phone exposes hidden cost of your tech

Back Market is taking aim at the culture of constant tech upgrades with the launch of Mine My Phone, a global campaign designed to expose the hidden environmental, human and geopolitical costs of producing new smartphones. At the heart of the campaign is a simple question: do you know how heavy your phone truly is?

A typical 200-gram smartphone requires more than 266 kilograms of raw materials extraction to produce. At a global scale, more than 319 million tonnes of upstream materials are extracted every year to manufacture the world’s smartphones alone.

Rather than focusing on what consumers should buy next, Mine My Phone asks them to look at what goes into the devices they already own.

The campaign brings the often invisible extraction and supply chains behind modern technology into the spotlight, while encouraging consumers to keep devices for longer, repair them or choose refurbished instead of buying new. Market has never existed just to sell more devices.

We exist because we believe the way the technology industry asks people to consume is fundamentally broken. The most powerful brands don’t just tell people what to buy; they give people a reason to question the status quo.

Mine My Phone is about making something deliberately invisible, impossible to ignore and then giving people a way to do something about it.

– Joy Howard, Chief Marketing Officer, Back Market To bring the campaign to life, Back Market is taking Mine My Phone to the streets of New York during Climate Week with three giant “Heavy Phone” sculptures, created by viral Nigerian artist Ian Umeh.

On the 23rd of September, climate activist and drag queen Pattie Gonia will carry one of the sculptures through Manhattan, including outside Apple’s Fifth Avenue flagship.

The sculptures transform the hundreds of kilograms of raw materials required to produce a smartphone into a physical spectacle, making the hidden weight of consumer technology impossible to ignore.

Alongside the street activation during NYC Climate Week, Mine My Phone launches as a public-interest platform exploring the environmental, human and geopolitical impacts of the critical minerals and raw materials used to manufacture modern devices.

The platform brings together data, expert commentary and reporting to make the complex extraction economy behind consumer electronics easier to understand. But Back Market’s ambition goes beyond awareness.

The company is using the campaign to call for a legally mandated 10-year device standard, covering durability, repairability and long-term software support. Back Market argues that extending devices’ useful life can reduce demand for new extraction. According to the company’s calculations, keeping a smartphone in productive use for 10 years rather than 2.

5 years can avoid approximately 757 kilograms of raw material extraction per device. The campaign is supported by Back Market’s new Smartphone Extraction Gap Report, conducted by independent research agency Opinium among 6,000 consumers across the UK, France, Germany, the U. S. , Spain and Japan.

The research found: More than half of consumers cannot name a single raw material inside their smartphone. Only one in four feels confident they know what goes into a device. Seven in ten have never investigated where the materials in their devices come from.

66% support legislation requiring devices to remain durable, repairable and software-supported for at least 10 years. When told that buying a refurbished phone avoids approximately 243 kilograms of raw material extraction compared with manufacturing a new one, 49% said they would be more likely to buy refurbished.

For Back Market, the findings highlight a disconnect between the way technology is marketed and the resources required to make it. Consumers have spent decades being marketed on the benefits of the next device without being shown the true cost of making it.

Our job as a challenger brand is to put the information on the table that the category would rather leave out. If that makes people keep their phone longer, repair it or buy refurbished instead of new, that’s a successful campaign for us.

– Joy Howard, Chief Marketing Officer, Back Market Mine My Phone forms part of Back Market’s broader effort to challenge throwaway technology culture and make longer device lifespans the norm. The company is calling on manufacturers to design devices that last, provide 10 years of software support and make parts accessible and replaceable.

It is also calling on policymakers to strengthen Right to Repair measures and address practices that can shorten device lifespans.

Back Market is working to convene manufacturers, policymakers and circular economy organisations around the proposed 10-year standard, with founding partners expected to be announced ahead of the company’s Slow Tech Summit in Paris on the 15th of October. Consumers can explore the Mine My Phone campaign and the research behind it at MineMyPhone. com.