One Phone Charger to Rule Them All? It’s About to Happen in Europe
(Photo: Martin Poole/Getty Images; illustration: Lauren Wade)
Are you the one person in your circle of iPhone-loving friends to carry an Android model—or vice versa? If so, you know that awful feeling when your phone is about to die, and even though everyone around you has chargers aplenty, you can’t power up because nothing’s compatible. If you live in a European Union nation, thanks to a recent vote on a draft law by the European Parliament, come 2016, you’ll never experience that scenario again.
Members of the European Parliament recently voted 550–12 on the Radio Equipment Directive, which will require tech companies to harmonize the external power supplies on all mobile phones, as well as any other communication devices—including tablets and GPS systems—that send and receive radio waves.
If all the hubbub about a common charger sounds like an epic case of first world problems, consider that the tangled web of chargers isn’t just a nuisance; electronic waste falls largely on developing nations. EU Parliament rapporteur Barbara Weiler says the law will “put an end to charger clutter and 51,000 tonnes of electronic waste annually.”
That’s only in the EU.
Fly across the pond, and you'll find mountains of old phones and incompatible chargers stuck in drawers. Eventually they get chucked in the garbage. According to the Environmental Protection Agency, in 2009 only 8 percent of cell phones in the United States, which contain parts that are often mined near gorilla habitat, were recycled.
As for the EU, the European Commission will now take on the task of determining what the common charger should look like. Apple is widely perceived as the company that’ll have the toughest time with whatever the Commission comes up with. Although some companies voluntarily agreed to create common chargers in 2010, if you’re an iPhone user, you still have to plunk down around $20 for an adapter. It remains to be seen whether Apple will be able to meet the commission’s requirements by continuing to sell adapters, or if it will be shamed into conforming to an industry-wide design.