The parts list and the suppliers for the FP1 and the FP2 do not have a lot of visibility here on the forum. So I thought about posting them here, so people can find them faster and look up the companies themselves. See the Malaysia Smelting Corporation Berhad as an interesting example. You can also try hunting for replacement parts using this information as a starting point.
I think the disclaimer for the FP1 will be true for the FP2 as well "Inclusion on the list does not mean that Fairphone endorses these suppliers or manufacturers as being “fairer” than competitors, nor does it imply that Fairphone has a direct relationship with these companies and is influencing their business practices."
Thanks for that list. It will be a good reference for the future. I don’t know if there would be anything else to add, or something which needs changing. If so, you might consider turning this into a Wiki.
Very helpfull list. Would it be possible to have it as a pdf and add it to the website from fairphone? (Reports and Tools) https://www.fairphone.com/resources/
One day, I would like to see a post that explains the different levels of the supply chain. This is also why I’m a fan of “dashboards”.
You have miners, you have smelters, and you have suppliers that get their materials from those and in the end create the things that make the phone. Would it be possible to publish this data? Or would this harm the OEM/ODM/suppliers relationship? This is something I do not understand … How much freedom do you have to choose your own suppliers to begin with?
I always thought it would/could work like this: You publish a list of suppliers (based on the Bill of Materials for the phone) and link those suppliers to the certificated smelters they use, so you can group the different suppliers with different smelters they use. These “source mines” for certified smelters can get audited to see how good they really work and if the land ownership and and the working conditions for the miners at the sites are as described or can accept minerals from new projects.
I’m sure it is not that easy, but I would like to know more about how the OEM/ODM process makes this easier or more difficult. So far, not a lot has been posted about this aspect – How much freedom does one have in the process (choosing the right supply companies) and how much depends on the OEM/ODM?
I’m afraid this would be very, very hard. Not to say, almost impossible.
Some years ago, a big brand did us a favour and tried to list down all materials used in all components of one of their products + suppliers, sub-suppliers and further on. They choose a radio alarm clock as product, since this is a very “simple” product, not too complicated.
In the end, the project wasn’t even finished. No one would ever read a book so thick, not even our inspection officers.
I guess this would be even worse for a high-tech smartphone with a lot of different materials, components, elements that are put together into components, …
This is also the main reason a “product material passport” has not yet been issued on EU level, but that’s a bit too much off-topic
Not really, it’s pretty simple (with computers … no book needed, just a database), but the details are complicated. It’s the same problem with organic food labels and other “labels” people attach for various reason to things. But electronics are not that complicated. It’s only about conflict minerals right now, not about the whole total lifetime “cradle to grave” craziness material chain.
A supplier is either using a certified smelter or is not using one. (The definition of “certified smelter” and checking this is complicated again).
A certified smelter is using minerals from audited mines (The definition of “audited mines” and checking this is complicated again)
A certified mine is an audited project/company with standards (The definition of “certified mine” and checking this is complicated again)
Every audit is just a snapshot in time and mines, smelter companies and people change. It will never be perfect.
And I understand that FP is just small project testing ideas to improve this. So I would like to learn more about this. I assume the OEM/ODM is part of the problem, but I’m not so sure about it (I assume they want to use their “trusted” suppliers to get their job done in time, not small companies running small but well certified batches).
Also on the local level, things will be very complicated (who ensures what really ends up in the bags for the smelter? Is it from the right mines? What about landownership, corruption, …)
Welcome to the world of compliance, where you need to have things “on paper” Same for FP: if they keep such database, it’s in very specialized programs, not just in excel. To make stuff readable for us, it would become a very, very long list…
If we keep out worker conditions, this is true. But you would still need the same information to almost the same crazy level of detail. Because of the very same issues you bring up yourself: you need to know this information of every supplier of every component. And his subcontractors, of course. Because a supplier is not very often producing your component from scratch…
So, we did question every supplier and sub-supplier. We identified all smelters they source from. This means even more mines, of course. Some of them will be clearly not in conflict zone and can be left out (note: this is the first time we can downgrade our level of detail!). Meaning we finally have a (quite long) list of mines to start checking.
As far as I understood until now, FP has chosen some key components for which they did open up the supply chain. A complete mapping of the FP supply chain may be too much, but more detailed information on these specific components would of course be very welcome!
Yep, there is no need to make this overly complicated. And over-reporting and over-documentation just steals peoples time. Nobody wants and can ensure 100% and I don’t need to know every detail, but spot checks are useful. Also as far as I understand it, it’s also about developing new methods and showing problems.
Okay, here is a quick test. Let’s take some random solder paste (see above, I think listed as “AIM”). Well known for tin.
The publicly available SDS are only available in Polish, but the companies website brings me to:
I end up on the old Conflict “Free Tin Initiative (CFTI)”. That’s good enough for me. Done. Wasn’t that hard. Apple is there as well.
But: The new website www.itri.co.uk is not working well for me and my solder and I cannot find more current info about the solder there easily. Else I would say that my solder is doing pretty good. But some more up to date info and maybe organized by batch numbers if possible would be nice.
I was not able to find the main smelters for Aimsolder/Aim metals easily by using the website. Maybe that’s not the idea of the site, but my search for smelters and more information ended there.
So lots of room for improvement. But I found this letter about falling prices for conflict minerals and the problems resulting from that on the site.
Update/TLDR: My main idea was to find more info on the tin used in the FP2 because I thought I would end up with a smelter or even one mentioned on the supplier list (Malaysia Smelting Corporation). I wasn’t able to, so I reread the tin blog entry. Didn’t help. Just saying and want to mention this. I knew this path exists, but it’s hard to find and check it online. Maybe for reasons already outlined, but it would nice to be able to see those arguments/explanations listed next to the suppliers (here: Tin/Solder and the smelter), so that more people can understand the complexity more easily.
Samsung is in Fairphone??? Isn’t it no other way? I can’t believe it.
I’m Korean and I know a lot of evil things in Korea because of samsung.
So many people are dying and suffering while making electronic parts at samsung’s factory. Even they don’t have labor union. Can you believe it even there are 96,000 workers (the number is only permanent worker)? there are not labor’s rights.
Recently it revealed samsung committed US$3,000,000,000 to president’s friend. But samsung compensated only US$500,000 to dyed factory’s labor cause of leukemia in 2007.
I want to replace Fairphone’s parts another one.
Done! 
Same for FP: if they keep such database, it’s in very specialized programs, not just in excel. To make stuff readable for us, it would become a very, very long list…