The documentary is packed with startling facts about e-waste, which makes up less than 5% of total landfill mass but accounts for more than 70% of global waste toxicity. — Unsplash
As tech enthusiasts chase the next big launch at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, one company is trying to short-circuit the hype with another message: “End fast tech.”
Back Market, the refurbished-electronics marketplace, used the annual spectacle to debut a documentary about the environmental and human cost of electronic waste. It’s all part of the Parisian brand’s ongoing fight against “planned obsolescence” and constant device upgrades – from smartphones and laptops to robots and lollipops.
Dandora: A Fast Tech Story, set in Kenya, starts in the largest dump site in East Africa – where waste pickers extract valuable metals from electronic waste in toxic, open-air conditions. It then brings viewers to the Ngara Market, where hundreds of people work to repair and refurbish broken machines recovered from those very same dump sites.
The 17-minute documentary – produced in-house by Back Market – is packed with startling facts about e-waste, which makes up less than 5% of total landfill mass but accounts for more than 70% of global waste toxicity. The film notes that up to 90% of a motherboard can be recycled when handled properly.
In a week built on hype, the film provides counter-programming. As major brands and unknown vendors pitch their vision of the future, Back Market’s ads have appeared on trucks driving up and down the Vegas strip inviting people to “join the slow tech awakening.” The term borrows from fast fashion, applying the same critique to another industry known for constant upgrades and short product lifecycles.
“There’s this whole sense of, ‘Don’t talk about the negative or don’t show things that are going to turn people off, but the whole world is suffering from an excess of positivity,” says Back Market chief marketing officer Joy Howard. “So sometimes you really need to see the concrete consequences of what is happening to understand it and see the meaning of it.”
Howard describes CES as “ground zero for upgrade culture,” which made it the perfect place for the premiere.
Smart and accessible public messaging is essential to speeding the shift to a circular economy, according to Sandra Goldmark, a climate professor at Columbia University and the author of Fixation. Goldmark, who spoke at Back Market’s CES event, says campaigns like Back Market’s also tap into an existing consumer sentiment.
“People are frustrated when their tech breaks and can’t be fixed, and sick of overdesigned digital clutter – and they should be, because it is totally unnecessary,” Goldmark told Inc via email. “Many people feel this intuitively …They are not crazy for expecting their stuff to work properly and to not trash the planet.”
Marketing against ‘fast tech’
This isn’t the first time Back Market has promoted the message to end fast tech. Last year, the company ran subway ads in New York urging riders to “downgrade now.” In London, it projected the message onto the exterior of Apple’s flagship store. And in a climate-focused riff on Apple’s “Shot on iPhone” campaign, Back Market created a campaign showing the extent of glaciers melting and lakebeds drying in the years between iPhone releases.
Back Market has a two-pronged approach to marketing. One is campaigns like “Downgrade Now,” which aim to shift attention away from upgrade culture. The other is what Howard describes as the “activist side” of the brand that forces people to rethink what a good experience with tech should look like.
She draws inspiration from the Situationist International, a mid-20th-century art-activist movement in Europe that used public disruption to challenge consumer culture. “They were all about provocation and taking direct action to raise people’s awareness of the insanity of early consumer society,” Howard says. “Projections are used by activists all over to say things they wouldn’t be able to put on a billboard.”
While the US has been slower to embrace slow tech, Howard says consumers have warmed up to marketplaces like Back Market as device prices, tariffs, and economic uncertainty nudge them toward refurbished options. She also noted a generational shift, with younger buyers more open to making their next phone a used one. Back Market’s growth in New York is four times that in the rest of the country, according to Howard. The company previously told Inc. that its revenue has grown 130% per year on average.
Promoting sustainability
From 2013 to 2015, Howard worked at Patagonia during its early push into circular fashion, when repair and resale programs were still seen as risky departures from traditional retail. In some ways, the challenge feels familiar: The tech for more sustainable products already exists, but the harder part is getting people to buy in.
Back Market partnered with iFixit on the unofficial “Worst In Show” awards, which spotlight CES products deemed the least repairable, least privacy-secure, and least sustainable. Though satirical, the campaign highlights real design issues. Liz Chamberlain, iFixit’s director of sustainability, notes that even major brands like Apple and Google have started making small changes to improve repairability.
“It’s a huge event with a huge environmental footprint, and we’re screaming at it, but the wheels of change are slow and huge,” Chamberlain says. “I’m optimistically hopeful, but I’m also not naive. I know tech will keep overproducing. All we can do is our best to try to make it happen more sustainably.” – Inc./Tribune News Service
