The iPhone 5 might be the thinnest, sleekest iPhone yet, but it’s not the most environmentally friendly. It’s close, though.
In a new study conducted by Healthystuff.org and iFixIt, the iPhone 5 was broken down and compared to previous iPhones and other smartphones when it comes to its usage of hazardous chemicals: lead, mercury, cadmium, hexavalent chromium, polybrominated biphenyls and polybrominated diphenyl ether.
The bad news is that the iPhone 5 scored slightly worse on environmentally friendly rankings compared to the iPhone 4S, which was the most environmentally friendly iPhone Apple has ever made. The iPhone 5 ranked a 2.80 (lower is better), where as the iPhone 4S ranked a 2.69.
There’s little reason for Greenpeace to flip their wigs, though, because that still makes the iPhone 5 one of the most environmentally friendly smartphones around. The only phones better than it are the Motorola Citrix, the Samsung Captivate and the LG Remarq… and all of those devices are an affront to nature in entirely different ways.
We’ve come along way. The original iPhone released in 2007 is actually the worst phone in the environmentally friendly rankings, scoring a maximum of 5.0.
Source: Healthystuff.org