Nokia’s “Less Is More” Eco Strategy

We’ve been thinking about ways handsets could be more sustainable, and it turns out that Nokia has too. Their latest idea: Make less stuff.

As part of its new “we:” strategy to save energy and reduce waste, Nokia’s N79 Eco will ship sans charger (the idea is to use your old one) and come in a smaller box. According to AllAboutSymbian:

The smaller box may not sound terribly significant, but when you operate on the scale of Nokia the little things really do add up. For example between February 2006 and the end of 2007, Nokia shipped 250 million phones in smaller packages resulting in 5,000 fewer truck journeys and saved 100 million Euros. In 2007, Nokia saved 15,000 tonnes of material (that’s about 55,000 trees) and 100,000 m3 of water (that’s around 18,000,000 toilets flushes).

The phone costs the same as the regular N79, but for each one sold, Nokia will donate £4 (~$5.56) to the World Wildlife Fund (WWF). You could view this as Nokia’s savings passed on to charity–though that would also show just how little a charge costs to make! To help this succeed, how about letting consumers save some money as well as the environment.

[via Engadget]