An overview of social impacts and their corresponding improvement implications: a mobile phone case study

The electronics industry has been a leader in understanding how to incorporate a triple bottom line approach into their operations. However, there is only a nascent understanding of the social impacts of the life cycles of electronic products. By providing an examination of the specific case of the mobile phone life cycle, this research advances the understanding of triple bottom line sustainability in this sector and provides actionable information in the form of improvement opportunities to ameliorate social impacts. The objectives are three-fold: to identify i) the social impacts across the life cycle of mobile phones, ii) opportunities to improve those impacts and iii) potential environmental and economic impacts of implementing those improvement opportunities. This work presents a two-part framework for considering different improvement opportunities that can affect social impacts and for considering the potential environmental and economic impacts of implementing the improvement opportunities. Results of this analysis highlight both positive and negative social impacts associated with electronic products. For example, while mobile phones have improved societal connections, manufacturing mobile phones involves environmental and human exposure to harmful heavy metals. These results lead us the conclusion that there are inherent tradeoffs present in triple bottom line sustainability, but future quantification of these tradeoffs will facilitate solutions to these social impacts.