Camille: The impact of technology on the planet is very concerning and very impactful actually. Today, you have around 4% of the global carbon emissions that are due to digitalization, and 75% of those emissions are due to the manufacturing of digital devices. Actually, the idea of Back Market was born from two observations. This observation is based on the impact of technology on the environment, which is very important, and I will get a bit into the details after that.
And the idea that there is a solution that has existed for a very long time, which is actually secondhand, repair and circularity. Back in the 60s or 50s, we used to repair our devices and our machines very easily. At Back Market, we look a lot at the secondhand car market. I mentioned earlier that 70% of the people who buy cars today are buying secondhand cars. And actually, the logic of this market was born in the 60s, when it was really normal to repair devices.
So, we wanted to bring this logic back into the market and apply it to technology devices, which was a bit difficult. This has a very significant impact on global warming and on the impact of technology because if you take the difference between manufacturing and refurbishing a smartphone, you have almost 80 kilograms of CO2. When you manufacture a new smartphone, you actually emit 86 to 87 kilograms of CO2. But refurbishing a smartphone, like changing the battery and the screen, emits around six or seven kilograms of CO2. So, the difference is huge. If you multiply this impact by the number of smartphones that are sold every year, the impact is actually huge.
Since our creation in 2013, we have contributed to avoid more than half a million tons of CO2. So, it's actually significant. And it means that the circular economy applied to the technology world is actually a huge contribution to the fight against climate change. And we are just talking about carbon right now. But when you look at the impact of technology, you have to also talk about water because manufacturing a new smartphone uses more than 80,000 liters of water, and refurbishing a new one involves around 14,000 liters of water. So, the difference is huge as well. You have also the raw materials. I’m picking the example of a smartphone a lot because we have data on it since the beginning of the year and we have more data on those devices this year.
But a smartphone is what we have proof — that it actually has a huge impact. But you know, our smartphones are made of rare precious metals, plastics and aluminum. All those materials have to be extracted and the extraction process has a very dramatic impact on the planet, ecosystem and biodiversity. So, what we are trying to do at Back Market is actually to convince the customers that they can have their own impact and their own contribution to the planet by changing their consumption habits and going towards secondhand devices. But this logic can go as well for clothes, for instance, or furniture. We want to start a change of habits or revolution in habits toward the secondhand market. But in order to do so, we have a lot of work to do.