Sustainability of the iPhone

Abstract

In this work, we discuss the sustainability of the iPhone, focused on the stages of the product life cycle. First of all, we give the theoretical background and explain how sustainability is understood in this work and we show that the viewed product life cycle bases on the stages production, usage and disposal. Furthermore, we describe on a technical view our study object, the iPhone in the 5.th generation. Following we look at each stage of the product life cycle and discuss what have a positive or negative influence on the sustainability. We show among other things that Apple reaches economical sustainability by high profit per device. As a result of our work, we come to the conclusion, that even through a lot of good approaches the iPhone is not absolutely sustainable, particularly with regard to ecological and social aspects. Last but not least, we give an outlook for future work.