Overcoming big tech, the climate crisis and planned obsolescence with Back Market 

How to keep your tech up to date without deepening the displacement crisis in the DRC

It’s that time of year again where mobile phone companies show you their shiny latest model. The iPhone Pro 17 and Google Pixel 10 come with an array of features which users have simultaneously never considered needing, but will now be made to feel like they are missing. For the iPhone’s part there’s a new camera, improved display and new AI features. For the Google Pixel 10, another improved camera with telescoping like zoom capabilities, “take a message” which honestly seems like a more complicated answering machine and their own interpolations of AI features. Last year we reported that 16 plaintiffs took Alphabet (Google’s parent company), Apple, DELL, Microsoft and Tesla to the U.S. federal appeals court on behalf of 5 children killed in cobalt mining operations. The odds of a U.S. court ruling against it’s own countries biggest corporations were always slim. Since then Donald Trump has been re-elected and his inauguration could’ve been mistaken for a tech convention. Earlier this year leaked documents revealed Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s plans to offer big tech companies tax levies. The recent state banquet for Donald Trump at Windsor Castle also hosted key big players in the tech industry. We say all of this to say, our political leaders are in the pocket of tech oligarchs and the human rights of workers in the global supply chain are none of their concern.

We are concerned though. So are Back Market. As a platform Sludge Mag uses smartphones, laptops, social media and all the fruits of big tech. But we want to do that whilst causing as little harm as possible to human beings and the planet. Back Market sell refurbished tech items whilst providing education about the scale of overproduction. There are currently 16 billion smartphones in circulation and e-waste has risen 82% since 2010. Worse yet tech companies are actively ensuring you have to buy more using planned obsolescence. Yesterday nearly 400 million working laptops became obsolete because Microsoft will not provide them with the Windows 11 update in a ploy to force users to buy new machines. To combat this Back Market got their hands on some and gave them an up-to-date operating system then sold them for £99 to illustrate how affordable and straightforward sustainable and affordable tech can be.

The world is taking notice. Back Market’s CEO Thibaud Hug de Larauze was recently recognised on the 2025 TIME100 Next. In the year of the companies founding less than 5% of smartphones in his native France were refurbished. Today the number is nearly 36%. Some of this generation’s key voices in the fight against overconsumption and climate destruction are firmly on side with Back Market recently collaborating with It’s Not That Radical author Mikaela Loach. Fair fashion campaigner Venetia La Manna, who graced Sludge Mag's Fashion Forward panel, has also partnered with Back Market sharing key insights on fast tech's similarities with fast fashion.

Sludge Mag's social media content is now primarily created with items from Back Market. Specifically a refurbished iPhone and Macbook Pro. Going forward we plan to use refurbished tech as much as possible and would encourage our readers to do the same. 

If you find yourself in New York you can check out their physical retail space on 449, Broadway, NY

Open 11:00 AM – 7:00 PM, Tuesday – Sunday.

You can learn more bout Back Market via their website, Instagram and TikTok.