The pursuit of creating a sustainable wearable is noble, no doubt. However, the tiny form factors of the best smart rings and design challenges of the best smartwatches render them difficult to repair, prone to wear and tear, and generally unsustainable—at least in some regards.
This week, the wonderfully innovative UNA Watch’s emergence prompted me to consider the woes and challenges of creating sustainable smart wearables. I have to say the picture is pretty confusing.
As I’ve mentioned, the nature of smart wearables themselves seems to present the sector as generally unsustainable. The best smartwatches on the market are by and large unrepairable, sealed units. Apple, Samsung, and countless others release new models every single year, often hugely iterative upgrades with very little in the way of design changes or big leaps forward.
So what are some of the challenges that come with creating a smart wearable, and can a modular, DIY alternative like UNA Watch be a novel solution?
Size matters
An easy opening foray into the world of sustainable wearables is repairability. Repairability and the right to repair tech generally have become buzzwords in the last decade, buoyed by the efforts of companies like iFixit to draw attention to devices that are difficult to repair, while praising ones that aren’t.
The concept is a simple one. A device that can be repaired more easily will last longer. A device that lasts longer is not only cheaper in the long run, but also more sustainable. It doesn’t need to be replaced as often, and it’ll be longer before it ends up on the recycling heap or worse, in a landfill site.
Smartwatches, and in particular smart rings, are by nature almost impossible to repair with any efficacy. Even if you buy the best smart ring, an issue with a battery, or a sensor will likely see you offered a replacement unit by an Oura or a Samsung. iFixit famously branded the Samsung Galaxy Ring as disposable tech, you have to destroy it to open it up and see what’s inside.
“Of course it can't be repaired. What kind of f*****g idiot would think it can be repaired?,” one kind Redditor observed in response. And to a degree they’re right, but it’s a point worth remaking here.
The same applies to smartwatches; a lack of space and tiny parts makes the likes of the Apple Watch Series 10 or Ultra 2 a tough repair job, and opening them usually compromises the integrity of waterproofing and build quality that makes them worth your hard-earned cash in the first place.
You can pay Apple around $90 for a battery service on an Apple Watch, but any other type of damage or repair will see you paying roughly the same amount you paid for the device in the first place, a figure reflective of the fact that Apple is giving you a brand new watch.
It’s a problem that prompted the UNA Watch’s birth. Founder Lewis Allison, formerly of Shot Scope, decided to put an end to wearables engineered for disposability after his wife scratched her two-day-old Apple Watch and was quoted a repair cost so high that replacing it seemed like the only viable option.
UNA’s solution is the smartwatch’s answer to Fairphone; a modular, DIY wearable that you can build from scratch yourself. Parts can be bought and replaced in case of repair, and you can even upgrade the components in the future, like you would a gaming PC.
It’s a novel idea that deserves credit, and I can’t wait to see where it goes. It also tackles what I think might be the core of the sustainable wearable issue; consumers view sustainability through the lens of value. If you buy a smartwatch and it lasts a long time, you’re going to feel happy that you’ve made a sustainable investment, in every sense of the word. Conversely, should you find yourself with a broken or busted smartwatch after just a few weeks or months of use, you’re going to feel cheated and let down by a lack of sustainability.
The problem is that repairability is an important yet decidedly insignificant part of what makes a wearable “sustainable” when you consider its impact on the planet.
Apple famously dubs many of its best Apple Watches as “carbon neutral”, reflective of the fact that Apple has endeavoured to eliminate as much of its Apple Watch carbon footprint as possible, before offsetting the rest.
It’s a controversial claim that recently saw a lawsuit filed against the company, the issue being the efficacy and legitimacy of the carbon capture efforts that underpin its carbon neutral claims.
So why does Apple spend so much time and money talking about carbon, and a lot less about repairability? The answer is this graph:
As you can see, when it comes to making an Apple Watch sustainable, nearly all of its measurable impact on the planet can be found in the making and manufacturing of the watch before it even reaches your wrist.
The biggest chunk by far is electricity for manufacturing, with materials and process emissions a distant second. The energy you spend charging it over its lifespan is a very small portion, and the transport “cost” is smaller still.
Google’s Pixel Watch 3 environmental report tells a similar story. Google estimates a whopping 86% of the greenhouse gas emissions from the Pixel Watch 3 are put out during production, only 7% during transport, 6% during customer use, and 1% during recycling, assuming three years of use.
As it turns out, the impact of smartwatches on the environment is to be found in the making of them, which brings us back to repairability.
If you could buy a smartwatch like UNA that you theoretically never have to replace again, that goes a long way to offsetting the carbon impact on the plant that comes from repeated purchases. It’s the same in pretty much any tech sector, but poses a unique challenge to wearables for the reasons we’ve discussed above.
Repair your way to sustainability
UNA Watch represents one possible approach to the problem of the sustainable wearable, a modular design built around replaceable, repairable, upgradeable parts. Of course, no tech lasts forever, but a smartwatch that could last 10 years would be a huge improvement.
The other approach is the one Apple takes, and that’s the one that’s most enticing consumer option right now. Apple’s watches are generally the best smartwatches on the market in terms of design, display, durability, software support, integration, health tracking, and more. The best Garmins might offer more health insights, but Apple is generally considered the industry leader.
If you’re a consumer, the most environmentally friendly option appears to be Apple’s carbon neutral approach. That gets you the best smartwatch experience possible, with the most minimal impact on the planet.
Of course, any carbon neutral claim is only as good as the offsetting underneath, and this is an issue in the news now and one that has flared up for Apple in the past. However, this will always be the issue.
Any smartwatch that requires to be manufactured and shipped to a customer (i.e. all of them) will have a carbon footprint. Offsetting is the only way to combat this, if you agree with the approach or value the solutions behind that, this will prove a satisfactory option.
If you don’t agree with offsetting generally as a concept, or consider it “greenwashing”, then the only other alternative is to simply never buy another smartwatch, making the one you have last as long as possible.
Ironically, here again Apple seems to present the best option to the consumer. Apple is still supporting the Apple Watch Series 6, launched in 2020, with watchOS 11 and key software updates in 2025. Apple also has a better track record of keeping its older software up to date too.
Even Apple products that don’t get software updates, in my experience, last longer than alternatives that do. The Apple Watch Series 3 served me, and then my grateful mother, for over 7 years. When we finally replaced it at the end of 2024, it was still working.
Compare and contrast that with a watch like the OnePlus Watch 3, a contender for best Android smartwatch of the year, the company recently had to clarify that it would get three years of updates rather than just two. The OnePlus Watch 2 from 2024 will stop getting software updates next year.
Apple is an easy target for criticism, environmental or otherwise. It’s notoriously upfront and shouty about its efforts to reduce its impact on the planet, for better or for worse.
The company certainly vaunts as the best choice when it comes to the impact your tech has on the environment, but a cursory glance around the alternatives yields disappointing alternatives.
By way of contrast, for instance, Garmin’s environmental impact page contains a few paltry references to products and packaging, recycling, and materials and substances. Commendable efforts all of these are, but they’re clearly not as comprehensive or as far-reaching as Apple’s.
The effectiveness and true impact of all of these measures remain to be seen. But in so far as I can tell Apple’s environmental scrutiny only makes headlines because none of its rivals are doing anything worth talking about.
The only sustainable smartwatch is...
There are of course other facets to what makes a wearable sustainable, such as where the materials to make it come from. But it seems to me to boil down to a couple of simple issues, the impact of making the wearable in the first place, and how long it will last.
The more repairable you can make a wearable, and the longer it will last, the longer you can stave off the impact of reinvesting in a new one and all the environmental impact that comes with it.
Of course, you could always take up Apple on its carbon neutral offer, and right now a more sustainable option doesn't seem to exist.
Maybe the UNA Watch's vision of a truly repairable, modular smartwatch is the kick the industry needs to get its house in order.
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