The consumer-facing tech and EV companies all proclaim there’s no artisanally mined cobalt or child cobalt in their supply chains. So don’t fret, consumer. Don’t fret, shareholder. If that’s true, where’s all the cobalt going? Last year, almost 75 percent of global cobalt production was from Congo. It’s impossible for these companies to say they don’t have Congolese cobalt. And if it’s impossible to say they don’t have Congolese cobalt, it’s impossible to say they don’t have cobalt that’s not been tainted by child labor, forced labor, environmental destruction, public health catastrophes from mining pollution. Full stop.
[…]Rarely in history has the practice of preying on the weak been so severe, generated such profit, and touched the lives of so many. Every level of the chain is preying on some of the poorest and most heavily exploited people in the world.
The world pays a hefty price for our way of life.
And yes, I modified the title slightly.
Would you prefer to colonize them ala “The sun never sets on the British Empire”? Because like it or not many of the materials we are going to need to get away from fossil fuel is in places run by very bad people, from Russia to China to the Congo, so you really only have 2 choices. Trade or conquer.
Remember we tried giving humanitarian aid to Africa in the 80s, had Live Aid and Hearing Aid and all these people giving boat loads of food and supplies….and it just ended up in the hands of the warlords. You can blame “them ebil corps” all ya want but do you REALLY think if they offered to pay the workers $15 USD an hour any of that would end up with the actual workers?
At the end of the day you can virtue signal until you are blue in the face but you cannot force other cultures to follow your rules or live like the west, so either you trade with them and hope for the best or you roll in the tanks, but as we have seen time and time again the whole “nation building” strategy? Just doesn’t work.
bassbeast,
This is a short term vs long term tradeoff, and I am not talking about profits, but rather helping them as you suggested.
Cash infusion, or direct help, as you said, almost never worked in the past.
Donating shoes for example, famously prevents a local shoemaker industry.
So, the only alternative is hoping to improve their economic outlook, which might increase their public awareness. And even that is a gamble. (Look at China. US singlehandedly helped them out of poverty, versus Japan, which went in an entirely different direction).
Can we do better? Yes, many companies, like Apple, Google, etc, are trying to minimize child or slave labor in their “foodchains” or try to eliminate it when possible. This is all incremental, and takes a long time.
But it would be still better than depending on coal, oil, or gas, and not even toughing those regions in the long term.
“Trade or conquer” is a false, simplistic choice.
“we tried giving humanitarian aid to Africa” …. ? Who exactly is “we”?
At the end of the day, you can shake the tree and demand …
– that “your” companies treat people fairly
– that they don’t hide behind platitudes and false choices
– that they use their $billions in profits to actually help those at the bottom who are literally dying so that they make those profits.
Imagine what a company like Apple or Google could do with the marketing bonanza if they were responsible for making sure that children were properly cared for, instead of scrambling in the dirt just so that some California dude can listen to his tunes without having to deal with wires.
The adverts almost write themselves.
Thats defeatist as hell. There is nothing wrong with trying to make the world a better place, and to open our eyes to the damage we’re causing others and the planet. This isn’t virtue signaling, this is a call to move forward to a better system. How? Well solutions are difficult, but that doesn’t mean impossible just because a bunch of randos can’t figure it out in five seconds on a tech web forum.
So what good does this do? Well it reminds me that every new device carries with it some serious impact to others and the planet. So choose a device that’s going to last. If you have the opportunity to make a more significant change, do it.
Bill Shooter of Bul,
Good points. Obviously it’s a tough problem to solve, especially when we don’t fully control the production chain. But it’s still disappointing that we are failing at what should be the easy bits on our side, in particular we’re failing to optimize the manufacturing processes that we do have control over: Make products that have a long lifespan, are repairable, interchangable, up-gradable, etc so that we can multiply utility of the resources we have. This would provide some real progress. Our companies some of whom have been notoriously fighting against the right to repair and making products that are unnaturally difficult to service are every bit as guilty of allowing this to continue as everyone else and we the public need to admonish them for doing so.
Then again, I think many people are of the mindset that if they don’t see it, it may as well not be happening and there’s nothing to fix 🙁
Very good points as well. I’m going to have to think about that long and hard before I make my next laptop purchase. I feel like Apple will last longer, but something like a framework would be easier to keep up to date while using less new materials.
Alfman,
Unfortunately, for many companies it is cheaper to replace the whole parts, or sometimes the device itself than trying to fix an issue.
Is the RAM broken? Or is the the CPU having a faulty connection? Or maybe the motherboard has some issue in layer 3 of 16? (Thinking about PC here, Mac is an entirely different beast, and as you said completely locked down).
Instead of spending a day or two, and paying the technician hundreds of dollars, it is sometime cheaper for the manufacturer to replace the laptop with a new one.
(As for child labor, big companies are really taking actions, but extremely slowly: https://www.businessinsider.com/apple-knowingly-used-child-labor-supplier-3-years-cut-costs-2020-12)
sukru,
On the other hand, to a repair shop, many repairs become routine, or would be routine in reasonably designed products. Unfortunately the problem is far worse than companies sitting back and doing nothing, they’re spending resources to fight against right to repair, actively depriving the market of components, and even tasking engineers to make products more difficult and more expensive to repair. In other words, they’re spending money on making products less repairable as a goal.
Apple is probably at the forefront of this trend to engineer hardware to be defective by design. Glue, solder, and physical measures had not stopped repairs, Indy repairs were still profitable and repair shops had a steady stream of authentic components in the form of old donor systems, so apple turned to DRM to block these repairs and they dialed it up to reject repairs even with authentic components. Apple’s anti-repair strategies are so effective now that notably even Louis Rossman, who’s been the face of the repair movement and making a successful business out of it, is finally giving up on sourcing and repairing components. Going forward he’s going to have to replace whole boards just as you say,
“Apple finally wins; Louis gives up”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vn_v-VxXNoI
It’s been a long hard fight, but after years apple’s battles are paying off. Before, apple’s policy of replacing entire boards was noncompetitive with indy repair shops, but now that apple is succeeding at killing the market for board repairs, they’ll be more than happy to sell replacement boards to Rossman and others. Consumers will pay inflated prices to replace boards rather than fix them Meanwhile authorized recycling centers are contractually obligated to destroy used equipment rather than allowing anyone to reuse components in repairs.
This is sad and infuriating on so many levels. Not only because it costs more, but because it’s worse for ewaste and the environment. Whether it’s phones/laptops/cars/home appliances/etc, society can do so much better than this. Most of us here on osnews know it, but the public at large are largely ignorant. And the companies most responsible are practically never held accountable. They control everything, have all the money, control the supply chains, write government policy, and heck they even shape public sentiment. These conditions don’t inspire much confidence that meaningful change is possible.
Alfman,
Yes, I agree on Apple being the “leader”, or at least one of the leaders in the anti-repair front.
One one hand, they try to use “recycled” rare earth materials (the main topic in this story): https://techcrunch.com/2022/04/19/apple-increased-the-use-of-recycled-materials-in-its-products-to-nearly-20-in-2021/, on the other hand, they increase the need for recycling those materials in the first place.
I recently bought an Apple Mini after fighting against it for years. (Everyone else increasing prices made them a viable alternative in the ARM market). However it is on a clock. If any of motherboard, cpu, ram, or even ssd is broken (they usually fail in 3-5 years), I’ll have to recycle the entire system.
(It is technically possible to upgrade/replace the RAM, but definitely too risky: https://www.macrumors.com/2021/04/06/m1-mac-ram-and-ssd-upgrades-possible/)
sukru,
Obviously recycling is important, but at the same time society sometimes uses it as a panacea to wash their hands of the problem while not fully appreciating that even recycling programs themselves are still very inefficient and harmful with respect to carbon emissions. It should not be considered a substitute for reusing device components. We should not allow ourselves to feel good about sending products to recycling when they could be repaired and reused instead. Designing hardware not be repairable is wrong. That shit needs to stop and we need to stop making excuses for the corporations responsible.
Not being able to replace the NAND flash, a consumable part with limited lifespan, is where I draw the line. I’ve had SSD fail, but even if I’m in the 95+% that doesn’t fail prematurely, I should be allowed to replace/upgrade it. No matter the merits of the product, planned obsolescence is very wrong.
Yes, although I bet you if a repair shop started specializing in aftermarket RAM upgrades without apple’s permission, soon apple engineers would add DRM to make sure this loophole gets blocked for future hardware generations. What a progressive company /sarcasm.
The US, UK and Belgium were complicit in the execution of Congo’s first elected Prime Minister, Patrice Lumumba, shortly after their independence, turning Congo into a failed State. This was done to stop Congo from nationalizing mining Uranium and Copper mining. After that, it’s been a succession of dictatorship, civil war and electoral fraud.
We cannot force them to “follow rules” and “live like the west”, but not assassinating their elected leaders and letting them own their own natural resources could be a good start.
Fairphone ?
They’re trying to do something about it but the problem is so widespread that it’s unavoidable. On the upside they’re the only ones honest about it, see their own report:
https://www.fairphone.com/en/2023/03/02/sticking-with-cobalt-blue/
> Therefore it is safe to say that there is a high likelihood of cobalt from the DRC and from artisanal mines flowing into the electronics supply chain, including into Fairphone’s.
I am going to go ahead and be the evil person here and say ‘at least the children have a purpose and a job there.’ With the recent damage and looting and riots in Chicago, seems the youth without something to do just go and destroy things.
(Yes, I am mostly being sarcastic.)
I mean it could always be worse, those kids could grow up to be like you.
But I thought it was built with capitalism?
Okay, I’ll stop.
After reading the article, it sounds similar to the situation with how cocoa beans are harvested to make chocolate. The chocolate brand, Tony’s Chocolonely, will source their cocoa beans from the tree all the way to the chocolate to ensure the entire process is ethical and involves no slave labor.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tony%27s_Chocolonely
That, in addition to their chocolate tasting amaaaaaaazing, makes it my favorite chocolate. 😀
Exploitation is not a new concept, and it’s done all the time, and as weird as it sounds, we praise people for doing it…. or at least buy the products of exploitation.
“The heart (of man) is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked: who can know it?”
It’s part of an arcane ritual at this point: “We acknowledge that our phones were built with child labor and that our oil comes from the horrible theocracy known as Saudi Arabia, but we are not going to do anything about it because doing something about it would hurt our standard of living. But rest assured that we are very sorry about it.”
It has become a ritual at this point: “We know our phones are built with child labour and our crude oil comes from the horrible theocracy known as Saudi Arabia, but we won’t do anything about it because doing something would undermine our standard of living. But rest assured we are very sorry about it.”
Repeat 3 times.