Sonnenglas Bright Minds:
Samuel & Carsten Waldeck
Four years ago, Samuel and Carsten Waldeck founded the family-run company "SHIFTPHONES", which expands the digital world with fair smartphones. The two live with their families in the small town of Wabern in Hesse, where Shift GmbH is also headquartered
Who is behind Shiftphones?
Behind SHIFTPHONES are our father Rolf and the two of us and Samuel and Carsten Waldeck. Together we run the company. We now have 21 employees in Germany and 12 more in China. We have many supporters who volunteer their time and support us. And last but not least, we have the greatest customers you could wish for.
A smartphone from northern Hesse - how did you come up with the idea?
Four years ago, we would never have dreamed of starting a company that primarily deals with the development of smartphones. Carsten was involved in the implementation of the most successful European crowdfunding project - the iCrane - and after its completion, we developed the idea of a reference monitor for our camera crane. Many coincidences, lucky circumstances, directions - whatever you want to call them - have led to this reference monitor becoming a smartphone.
Thanks to the iCrane, we already had a strong crowd behind us, which motivated us to create smaller smartphones in sizes 4, 5 and now also 6 inches instead of the previously released 7-inch phablets (these are large, internet-enabled cell phones, a mixture of smartphone and tablet, so to speak). So we stumbled into smartphone development more or less by accident, but are now pursuing this goal with great passion.
What do you do differently compared to the big smartphone manufacturers?
During the planning phase for SHIFT7 (the phablet mentioned above), we became aware of the damage that the production of electronic parts causes to us humans and our environment. This was no longer in line with our company's core values: freedom, community and appreciation. So we developed concepts that met our sustainability requirements. Repairability, modular design, fair-trade raw materials, no coltan, as little gold as possible, etc.
We also looked for partners who could work closely with us to ensure the socially responsible production of our appliances. In our collaboration with the NGO Taos in China, with whom we trained and audited the partners, we repeatedly came across points where we wished we could achieve better conditions more quickly. Although the conditions were better than those of any other smartphone production facility we looked at, our aim was to achieve German standards. That's why we founded our own small technology factory in China at the beginning of 2018.
The Shiftphone is made by hand in China / © Shiftphones
This is where the final assembly of our SHIFTPHONES takes place, which accounts for over 80% of the human work on our smartphone. Our Chinese employees work under similar working conditions as we do here in Germany.
The above-average salary that we pay them, the way in which we protect them and the family, friendly and healthy environment in which they work are also exceptional. It is also important for us to maintain a constant exchange with human rights organizations, which, for example, have strongly shaped and influenced the development of our own manufactory.
The German
What is your corporate philosophy?
SHIFT means change and you can see this in the entire company structure. While many other manufacturers strive to rake in ever greater profits, we use 100% of our profits to support sustainable and social projects. Instead of paying high salaries, we try to make the success of the company tangible for every one of our employees, whether in China, Germany, Switzerland or Nigeria and New Zealand, where we have been able to establish additional SHIFT branches in recent weeks.
We collect all our activities in our report, which you can read here.
What things should you pay attention to when buying a smartphone from a sustainability perspective?
The best thing is not to buy a smartphone or to use the old device for as long as possible. Of course, this is difficult in this day and age. A smartphone is a daily companion that is used for communication and makes life easier in many ways. Many of us are also dependent on a smartphone for work. Sometimes it has to be a new device. And sometimes new technology is exciting. Further developments offer new possibilities and new features that make it much easier to use.
How do you deal with the issue of raw materials? Smartphones in particular contain many rare precious metals...
Yes, the origin of materials and transparent supply chains are a very important issue. But they are by no means the solution to the problem. It is impossible to achieve a transparent supply chain for a smartphone. You can't imagine that our suppliers only have one supplier for a particular material. There are several, often dozens. The market is constantly changing. We experience this often enough when reordering parts. We try to build long-term partnerships with suppliers, but especially in the Asian market, where the majority of components come from, this is simply not yet possible.
That's why we thought about how we can still get fair materials into our supply chain. Our solution is to put the cart before the horse. In January 2019, the individual components of our SHIFT6m will be pulverized in cooperation with an institute at the University of Göttingen and subjected to a spectral analysis, which will allow us to determine exactly which materials are used in which proportions in the SHIFTPHONE. We use this list to find mines and companies through which we can purchase the materials fairly. So far, we have been able to avoid using coltan because we use an alternative ceramic for the microcapacitors on the motherboard.
We already have partners for gold and tin. Carsten was in April 2017 together with the Federal Institute for Geosciences and Natural Resources in Congo and was on site during the certification of some mines. We bring these materials to the suppliers who we know use the appropriate materials. Similar to the electricity market, we add fairly traded materials to the supply chain in the quantities we use. Then the fair material may not be directly in our SHIFTPHONES, but somewhere in the supply chain and thus the trade in fair materials is supported.
What makes a SHIFTPHONE particularly sustainable?
It is important to us that old and disused SHIFTPHONES do not end up as electronic waste, but always find their way back to us. That is why we are the only manufacturer to have a device deposit. Customers can return their SHIFTPHONES to us at any time and either have the option of upgrading to a newer device or we can buy the device back from them. We can refurbish old devices and resell them or use individual parts as spare parts.
Should a SHIFTPHONE give up the ghost at some point - we hope that it will be as many years as possible - a SHIFT customer will receive a €22 device deposit back. We will then take care of the effective recycling of the SHIFTPHONE by checking every single part and, if it is no longer usable, recycling it according to type.
What is your vision for the mobile communications world?
Our vision goes far beyond the world of mobile communications. One of our future projects is the SHIFTmu. A modular universal computer with a SHIFTPHONE at its heart. It can be expanded with individual components to become a tablet, a notebook and a desktop PC. This allows us to save more than 80% of resources, as only one device is needed for the different usage scenarios. But SHIFTmu is just the tip of the iceberg. We can expect many more exciting products from SHIFT that we are not yet allowed to talk about.
Our wish with SHIFT is to set an example that there is more to life than the consumption of products, especially in the electronics sector. This is one of the reasons why each of our phones comes with a warning: "there is no greater gift for you today, than the next 24 hours. use them wisely. people are more important than machines". SHIFT happens!
The questions were asked by Julia Hupel.
<div class="copyrights">photo in header © Shiftphones</div>