Vodafone – Device Circularity: how Vodafone is building and scaling up circularity programs for its customers

Vodafone believes that urgent and sustained action is required to address the climate emergency, sustainable resource use and broader environmental impacts, and is committed to addressing it within its value chain. To address this with customers, Vodafone is taking ambitious action to drive device circularity through initiatives aimed at extending the lifecycle of devices, providing transparency on the environmental impact and promoting recycling. 

Vodafone’s Device Circularity program focuses on three key areas: 

1. Extending Product Lifecycle: Vodafone offers services like repair, insurance, and trade-in to extend the life of devices. Extending a phone’s use by one year can reduce its annual CO₂e impact by up to 29%. Vodafone also offers its customers the opportunity to trade in their used phones in its sales channels, including digital and retail stores. This service is already available in several markets, including the UK, Ireland, Germany, Turkey, and South Africa. 

2. Lower Carbon Devices: Vodafone, in collaboration with other operators, developed Eco Rating to provide a single score for smartphones – with reliable information regarding the environmental impact of mobile phones, from production to use and disposal. This empowers customers who wish to select lower carbon devices. Vodafone also offers refurbished phones to its customers, which can avoid around 50 kg CO₂e of carbon emissions over a 2-year period compared to using a new phone for 3 years. 

3. Reducing e-Waste: Vodafone Germany’s “One for One” initiative, in partnership with Closing the Loop, ensures that for every new phone sold to private customers in Germany, an old one is collected in Africa for professional recycling back in Europe. In the absence of this recycling, electronic waste is often stored in landfill or partly incinerated. In the two years since the initiative was launched, more than 1.5 million mobile phones have been collected through this campaign, with around 6,300 kilograms (kg) of copper, 37 kg of silver and 7 kg of gold recovered from the collected devices. Extending its historic efforts, Vodacom South Africa has also recently announced a program to divert e-waste from landfills into recycling programs through specific take back schemes. 

Collaboration and partnerships are a key part of Vodafone’s Device Circularity program. Vodafone has partnered with Recommerce, a major French company, to offer the trade-in service in Europe. To increase trade-in volumes we have also partnered with WWF and launched a collection campaign called “One million phones for the planet”, which encourages trade-in, recycling and the donation of old phones.  

Vodacom South Africa has partnered with the non-profit Producer Responsibility Organisation (PRO) Circular Energy to drive the local e-waste program.