Comparing Fairphone and TCO Certified is slightly misleading

It’s a positive development to see initiatives on the market that aim to make the IT industry more sustainable. The product certification TCO Certified and the manufacturer Fairphone both offer the possibility of choosing smartphones that take social and environmental aspects into consideration. However, the report that compares Fairphone side-by-side to TCO Certified Smartphones is somewhat misleading.

In July a comparison was published that compared the criteria for TCO Certified Smartphones and the manufacturer Fairphone’s sustainability policies. The report was created by SOMO against a Dutch CSR platform called an MVO platform, and was commissioned by Südwind. It’s worth noting that TCO Certified is a sustainability certification for IT products that is also based on the importance of good ergonomics and low power consumption in the workplace.