In 2019/2020 five of Europe’s leading mobile operators  joined forces through a consortium to develop and launch a harmonised scoring system to evaluate the environmental impact for Smartphones and Feature Phones.   – This consortium - Deutsche Telekom, Orange, Telefónica (operating under the O2, Vivo and Movistar brands), Telia Company and Vodafone have been working with independent 3rd parties whose profession is “Life Cycles Assessment” – naming IHOBE and IK Ingenieria. End of May 2021 this pan-industry Eco Rating labeling scheme was launched. Since November 2021 Eco Rating has expanded globally and is open for all mobile operators to join. At the end of 2022 there are more than 20 mobile suppliers that supports this initiative and provide the raw data about their device models that is then assessed through our Eco Rating methodology. In the area “About us” you will find an overview of all participating mobile operators and suppliers that is updated regularly.

The Eco Rating initiative has three main goals:

• To address the increasing consumer demand for environmental information about mobile phone devices
• To raise awareness and transparency by creating a consistent way for consumers to identify and compare the most sustainable mobile phones
• To encourage and incentivise suppliers to reduce the environmental impact of their devices.

By end of 2023 more than 500 devices had been rated, and the total number of devices assessed by Eco Rating is continuously increasing in order to keep the pace of new portfolio entrants so that the growing demand from consumers for more transparency continues to be met. The assessed devices can be found on this website in the  “Ratings” menu as well as on the websites and shops of the participating mobile operators.

The consortium aims to keep the current portfolio rated as new portfolio entrants get regularly assessed and increase the consumer visibility of Eco Rating across the point of sales. By the end of 2023 Eco Rating had been launched in more than 35 countries and its geographical footprint is expected to grow in the upcoming years. More than 20 leading mobile suppliers are already onboard, and the increased transparency brought by Eco Rating heightens the ambition of manufacturers to find better approaches to reduce their devices’ environmental footprint reduce waste and critical substances and improve circularity. This has already intensified the dialogue between manufacturers and the consortium to foster eco-design and increase the contribution of this industry to global environmental protection targets. 

Each mobile phone handset is given an overall Eco Rating score out of a maximum of 100 to signal the environmental performance of the device across its entire life cycle. Eco Rating also highlights five key aspects of mobile device environmental sustainability, providing additional scores for durability, repairability, recyclability, climate efficiency and resource efficiency.  

The higher the score, the better the environmental sustainability performance of the device.

The methodology has been established so that the highest possible score - 100 out of 100 - is very challenging for manufacturers to achieve.

There are no ‘good’ or ‘bad’ scores – but by applying the Eco Rating methodology consistently and bringing it to market, it will help consumers identify and compare the most sustainable mobile phones and, over time, encourage suppliers to reduce the environmental impact of their devices.

Eco Rating has been developed jointly by five of Europe’s leading mobile operators in close co-operation by third party experts in Sustainability and Life-Cycle-Analysis. The development was executed by recognized international standards from the European Union, ITU-T, ETSI and ISO. 

The methodology is periodically revised in order to better assess upcoming new technologies against environmental best practices, as well as ensuring it adapts to any relevant European and international regulations and/or standards, markets trends, etc.

For more information, please refer to ‘The Eco Rating Methodology’.

Eco Rating aims to assess as many models as possible from all participating mobile suppliers. However there are devices in the market that do not have an Eco Rating score. For devices which are not rated, consumers will have to rely on the information provided by suppliers.

• Around 80% of the greenhouse gas emissions over the lifetime of a device occur during the production stage. To reduce the carbon emissions associated with a mobile phone, keep it for as long as possible before replacing it.
• The battery inside a mobile phone is a sensitive item. Quick charging, trickle charging and exposure to excessively cold or warm temperatures will reduce its useful life.
• Do not keep the device in environments that are too hot or too humid. This will increase corrosion and can impact components, including the battery.
• Always ensure the device is kept up to date with the latest available software updates. Missed software updates can give the impression that the device is performing poorly or incorrectly – encouraging people to replace the device early.
•  In case the display has too many scratches or is broken and/or the battery has too low capacity and/or other parts do not function anymore, do not throw away the device but bring it to an authorized repair center. A repair is often much cheaper than purchasing a new device. 
• Check if the supplier or operator offers a take back program– it might be possible for the device to be refurbished and resold.
• All devices that can’t be used anymore should not be thrown in the normal “household garbage” but should be brought back to a recycling point to extract raw materials, metals and minerals.

One of the key reasons why consumers replace their mobile phones are defects or wear and tear, which prematurely shortens the viable lifetime of the device.  The more durable the device, the less likely it is to be discarded early, reducing the greenhouse gases associated with the manufacture of a new device and reducing e-waste.

During mobile phone repair, a technician will need to dismantle the device, replace the defective part and then reassemble it again. As a result, the labour cost is a substantial part of the overall cost of repairing a mobile phone. If the design of a mobile phone makes it easier and quicker to dismantle and reassemble, then this will reduce that element of the cost.

Recyclability indicates how much of the material used in the manufacture of a mobile phone can be recovered at its end of its life and processed for other future uses. The ideal is to avoid having materials left over after recycling that need to be disposed of in landfills.

The relevant European law (WEEE 2012/19/EU) only mandates basic recyclability. The assessment for ‘recyclability’ exceeds the requirements in law.

Device ‘repairability’ provides consumers with an assessment of how easy it is to repair a faulty device.  If devices can be repaired, they can remain in use for longer. 

This aspect of Eco Rating was included independently from the legislative standard introduced by France’s ADEME agency, which has applied only in France since 2021 to a range of consumer products including smartphones, washing machines, TVs or lawnmowers. 

Both the French index and the Eco Rating ‘repairability’ rely on the same underlying standards.  There are some differences - the French index relates to documentation (guidelines for self-repair, for instance) or how long spare parts will remain available – while Eco Rating also considers software support and the availability of major spare parts such as displays or batteries. 

EPEAT is an environmental evaluation system that ranks different kind of electronic devices based on their environmental attributes. The system has a scoring system in which gold, silver or bronze rating can be achieved, depending on device performance in different categories. The consortium believes that both systems are complementary.

For mobile phones, four suppliers are participating. Under EPEAT, the life cycle assessment (LCA) of the product only represents 7.5% of the overall score, while under Eco Rating it is 100%. The EPEAT system asks if the supplier has conducted an LCA and if this LCA has undergone third-party verification or was made publicly available.

EPEAT is not asking suppliers for the raw data for their LCA, and is also not considering the result obtained in the LCA. Under Eco Rating, a simplified LCA is performed and the results are correlated to 16 environmental impact categories.

The overall Eco Rating score (1-100) is based on the evaluation of the environmental impact of the entire life cycle of the analysed device and its material efficiency scores. In addition, some additional sub-scores are also shown, providing more detailed guidance on the performance for specific key aspects.

The Rating Eco Rating applies a consistent evaluation methodology equally and objectively across 16 different environmental impacts and 6 circular economy criteria.  The final score includes assessments that are not reflected in the sub-scores.

Devices that achieve higher sub-scores will usually achieve a higher overall Eco Rating score, but the overall score is not directly dependent on the sub-scores and isn’t calculated as an average of the sub-scores.  However, all the sub-scores have a relative impact on the overall result, depending on their relevance towards the life cycle of the specific device being assessed.

To obtain the overall Eco Rating score, all the aspects within the life cycle of the device are evaluated across 16 different environmental impacts. These include climate change, resource use, land use, water scarcity, photochemical ozone formation, eutrophication, acidification, and ozone depletion

The results from these 16 individual evaluations are then weighted to obtain a single score, showing the overall environmental performance of the device.

The weighting uses factors recommended by the European Commission in the EF Method, which is publicly available and already used by the Product Environmental Footprint Initiative.

The Eco Rating and the methodology is developed for smartphones and feature phones. Please note that given their differences, scores for smartphones and feature phones are not comparable. Other product types like tablets, wearables/smart watches, C-IoT products, routers and laptops are out of scope for the time being.

The Eco rating methodology considers the full life cycle of the device, taking into account more than 10 different environmental impact categories, combined into one single score.

It isn’t possible to directly correlate the CO₂ emission benefits of a device that scores 10 points higher, as the score not only considers the carbon impact but accounts for a range of environmental factors.

Since the climate impact is an important element, Eco Rating includes the subcategory “Climate efficiency”.

As a rough rule of thumb, a device with a 10% longer bar for “climate efficiency” saves the equivalent of around 10Kg of CO₂.  This is a simplistic view, however, and includes the CO₂ emissions generated during manufacturing (mainly driven by Integrated circuit and printed circuit boards), transport (e.g. from Asia or US to Europe) and the electricity consumed by regularly charging the battery for the equivalent of four years.

The key purpose of Eco Rating is to evaluate the environmental impact of the devices and not the company. There are already established methods to assess sustainability performance on a corporate level. However, the industry was missing a common solution to score the ecological performance of specific devices transparently, and it is our ambition to fill that gap.

Devices that are protected for scratches or drops by “protection accessories” would positively impact the lifespan of a device. Also, devices that are refurbished (e.g. exchange of the display, camera or battery) and enter the supply chain again have a positive impact on the environment. As the Eco Rating methodology is designed for the original/new devices brought into the markets, these aspects (accessories and refurbishment) would add complex dependencies to the methodology and make the comparability of the original devices difficult, hence these are not in scope of our current approach.

The five sub-categories that are shown on the label have the biggest impact on the environment. Energy consumption during daily use is not among them. A smartphone consumes about 3-8 kWh per year depending on many factors such as personal usage pattern (talk time, browsing time, steaming) but also on on the antenna performance (antennas are tuned for the differnet network and bands) , network (2G, 3G, 4G, 5G, WiFi) and Apps that are not in idle stage when not used. Relative to large consumer goods (like washing machines, TVs, oven, air conditioner, water boiler, etc) a mobile device has a hundred times lower energy consumption. In the overall score the energy consumption is included. Because it contributes to less than 5-8% of the overall environmental impact, it was decided to not show this as a dedicated sub-category as it could result in a misleading information for the customer.

Yes, Eco Rating is open to all mobile operators that would like to join this initiative. This geographical expansion will help to improve transparency and raise awareness of the environmental impact of the smartphones that are supplied, and the customers choose. The consortium is thus encouraging other mobile operators to join the Eco Rating initiative and is happy to provide additional information to them about how to join the initiative.

The consortium has extensively consulted with all device suppliers prior to launch and openly shared plans and the methodology. At launch (May 2021), we had 16 participating suppliers in the scheme. By end of 2023, we had more than 20 participating suppliers, representing the majority of the European smartphone market by sales volume. 

All participating suppliers support Eco Rating on a voluntary basis and not as a mandatory requisition. The customers will acknowledge this transparency and harmonized solution and we are convinced that in the future more suppliers will join. 

No. There are differences in the weighting factors for certain questions and new questions added in the new methodology. Therefore, a device that has been assessed with one methodology should not be compared to a device that has been assessed with the other methodology. In order to not mix up both versions, the labels (old and current version) are different.

Since devices assessed with different methodologies should not be compared, it is important that you consider specific aspects of the label (e.g year and tag “Version 3”).