“This is a thousand blood diamonds multiplied – diamonds aren’t harmful. Prolonged cobalt exposure may cause lung illness, blindness, birth deformities, and many types of cancer, according to Kara, who has spent years investigating the matter in the Congo. Children, however, are sometimes sent down into the tight temporary mining shafts, which are always at risk of collapsing. “They’re doing it for $2 a day, and that’s the difference between eating or not eating that day for them, so they don’t have the choice of saying no.”Īdult miners dig up to 600 feet below ground using simple tools and no protective clothes or modern machinery. “There are hundreds of thousands of the world’s poorest people, mining for cobalt.” Kara claims that his research demonstrates that big tech’s guarantees cannot be trusted. The deplorable conditions of cobalt miningĪ new set of pictures shot inside mines in the Democratic Republic of the Congo by Siddharth Kara, an adjunct lecturer at Harvard Kennedy School of Government, may challenge Apple’s assertions that its goods are ethically sourced and marketed. When the instances happened, they were all between the ages of 13 and 17.Īpple, Microsoft, Google, Tesla, and others all insist on holding cobalt suppliers to the highest standards and only doing business with smelters and refiners who follow their codes of conduct. The case was filed in Washington, DC, on behalf of five youngsters who died and 11 who were wounded while working in the mines. More than a dozen African families sued Apple, alleging that their children were killed or badly injured while mining cobalt for the tech titans. The researchers claimed to have identified 16 global consumer electronics firms that are clients of Asian battery manufacturers who purchase cobalt from the Chinese business.Ī year later, Apple declared that it would no longer purchase cobalt mined by hand in Congo since the mines continued to face issues with child labour and terrible working conditions.Īt the same time, it was found that 40,000 minors labour in mines on a regular basis.Īpple was named in a lawsuit accusing several tech titans of using child labour to extract the mineral. The dirty secret of all major tech manufacturersĪmnesty International and African Resources Watch (Afrewatch) accused Apple, Samsung, and Sony of insufficient control of their cobalt supply from mines in the Democratic Republic of the Congo in a 2016 study.Īccording to the report, youngsters as young as 12 years old were digging up metal in the mine. The program’s fine language specifies that phones that are ‘in good shape’ would be given to a new owner. This is mostly accomplished through Apple’s trade-in programme, which encourages customers to exchange their old gadgets for new ones. Russia does to US what US did to China, bans all Apple products from govt-affiliated orgs As Apple tries to launch its credit card in India, Goldman Sachs is trying to bail outĪpple’s announcement – Too little, too late?ĬEO Tim Cook, announced that Apple will use 100 per cent cobalt in all of its in-house-designed batteries, adding that “great technology should be excellent for our consumers and the environment.”Īpple stated that it “has greatly extended the usage of certified recycled cobalt over the past three years, making it viable to incorporate it in all Apple-designed batteries by 2025.” This was accomplished with the use of an iPhone disassembly robot that separates batteries from other components, allowing specialised recyclers to recover cobalt and other elements like lithium.Īpple claims it has retrieved 24,250 cobalt since 2019 and will have enough to utilise in all devices by 2025, but the process has been sluggish.
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