Transform Together - multi-stakeholder partnership promoting scaleable and replicable SCP practices

Transform Together selected consumer goods as its first priority and decided to focus on smartphones, one of the most widely used consumer goods, and established a Working Group on sustainable smartphones in 2016. The partnership now has over 50 experts on its mailing list of which around 25-30 are active members of the group. The partnership convenes 3-4 times a year to work on specific activities and seek input from its members. The group has worked during 2016-18 to draw out replicable and scalable solutions for sustainable smartphones; these were summarised in a report "Creating sustainable smartphones: Scaling up best practice to achieve SDG 12" published in May 2018. This work was subsequently considered and further developed in a workshop of the group in Brussels on 19 June 2018. Seven of the solutions identified were also presented by the group members at a side-event at the UN High Level Political Forum for the Sustainable Development on 9 July 2018. As the result of these activities, Transform Together has now extended the scope of the smartphones working group to cover ICT products more broadly and created a vision for a global ecosystem change for sustainable smartphones and ICT by 2030. The strategy to achieve the vision has a strong focus on leveraging the power of volume buyers and procurers of ICT products, who have the opportunity to create a powerful market pull for more sustainable products and encourage sustainable practices in the global ICT supply chains. Transform Together is now finalising this approach and planning the practical actions that are required to achieve the 2030 vision.