Did you know that the minerals in your mobile phone and laptop may have direct links to child slavery in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC)?
These minerals are sourced either from legal government controlled mines or from illegal operations, run by rebels who use enslaved labour – often children as young as eight years.
These children are often forcibly taken from their homes by armed criminal gangs and set to work in dangerous conditions digging for tantalum, gold and other minerals. These children also have little or no intrinsic value to their captors and can often die with no record or accountability. At present the UK and EU have little or no substantial legislation in place to mitigate this process, unlike the US, which has the Frank Dodd legal framework, signed by President Obama in 2010.
This podcast addresses these concerns and provides some momentum towards the realisation and implementation of substantial EU legislation in 2021.
Hello, and welcome to this latest instalment of the Electronic Specifier Insights podcast. Did you know that the minerals in your mobile phone and laptop may have direct links to child slavery in the Democratic Republic of Congo (more commonly known as the DRC)? As such, in this latest podcast we look at the true cost is of these gadgets that are so indispensable in our day to day lives?
Whilst global manufacturers are constantly striving to provide us with more and more sophisticated features at relatively competitive prices, we need to ask ourselves how this is being achieved.
In a recent article for Electronic Specifier, Karen Mascarenhas, Director of Mascarenhas PR, explained that on the 30th June this year, coinciding with the 60th anniversary of the independence of the DRC, it was the first time in history, that a European monarch (Belgium’s King Philippe in this case) expressed what he called his “deepest regrets” to the DRC for his country’s colonial abuses.
During the reign of King Leopold II, in the period between 1885 - 1908, it is estimated that as many as ten million Congolese died. In a letter to the President of the DRC, King Philippe wrote: “I would like to express my deepest regrets for these injuries of the past, the pain of which is now revived by the discrimination still too present in our societies.”
It is this current discrimination, noted by the King Philippe, that needs to be addressed by the global – and in particular - the European electronics industry as it is from the DRC, that some of the most prized and critical minerals for our smartphones and laptops are obtained - gadgets that people in the G8 and BRIC countries cannot do without.
These minerals are sourced either from legal government controlled mines or from illegal operations, run by rebels who use enslaved labour – which often includes children as young as eight years old.
These children are often forcibly taken from their homes by armed criminal gangs and set to work in dangerous conditions digging for tantalum, gold and other minerals. These children also have little or no intrinsic value to their captors and can often die with no record or accountability. At present the UK and EU have little or no substantial legislation in place to mitigate this process, unlike the US, which has the Frank Dodd legal framework, signed by President Obama in 2010.
This podcast addresses these concerns and provides some momentum towards the realisation and implementation of substantial EU legislation in 2021.
3TG
Conflict minerals are mined largely in areas of armed conflict and then sold or traded by armed groups for huge illegal profits. They are often smuggled via Rwanda and Uganda, still controlled by armed militia, to the East African coast line, where they are then shipped on to Far East countries such as China, India and Malaysia. Once there the ores are integrated into legal minerals which are then streamlined into electronic components manufacturing and production sites worldwide.
For decades this has been a critical problem for the DRC whose mineral wealth, ironically, is enormous, whilst its people, for the most part, live in abject poverty.
As for the minerals themselves, columbite-tantalite, or Coltan, is the metal ore from which tantalum is extracted and is used in electronics for the production of high reliability capacitors with applications in laptops, computers, mobile phones, HD video and digital cameras, gaming consoles, as well as for critical aircraft requirements for jet-engine turbine blades and medical use such as surgical components, heart pace-makers and hearing aids.
Figures indicate that the DRC accounts for between 65-80% of the world’s coltan.
Wolframite is an ore used for the extraction of tungsten with its derivative, tungsten carbide, providing a very hard wearing and rugged solution for electronics design engineers – being a material of choice for the vibration mechanism in mobile phones. It is also used widely for metal wiring, electrodes and contacts within lighting applications in the electronics and electrical markets as well as in the heating and welding industries.
Casserite is the red ore from which tin is derived and traded on stock exchanges around the world. It’s primarily used within the electronics industry for plating and soldering circuit boards.
Considered a rare metal, gold is a vital component within the plating process for critical use interconnection products and an important part of the chemical compounds used for semiconductor manufacturing and aerospace applications.
There are significant reserves of Tungsten, Tantalum, Tin, and Gold, commonly referred to as 3TG, in the DRC yet the country also accounts for a staggering 49% of the world’s cobalt reserves, three percent of copper, and with gold and diamond reserves which remain largely unexplored.
UN guiding principles on Business and Human Rights highlight the fact that all companies have a key role to play and the US went further when the US Congress enshrined this by passing the Frank Dodd Act - legislation signed into law by President Barack Obama on 21st July 2010, which applies to all companies that report to the US Security and Exchange Commission (SEC).
On 1st January 2021 a new law will come into force across the EU – the Conflict Minerals Regulation - which will help regulate 3TG trading in Europe covering Due Diligence and Implementation. Towards helping companies adhere to guidelines, the European Commission will create a list of global smelters and refiners, who source these minerals responsibly.
In the UK, the Department for International Development and the World Bank are co-funding a major mineral sector reform programme which will improve regulation of the DRC minerals sector to improve conditions for miners.
Companies are in jeopardy of being compromised knowingly or unknowingly along the supply chain by conflict minerals. This can take place ‘upstream’ from the mine to the smelter, en route from DRC to the Far East, or ‘downstream’ from the smelter to manufacturers of electronic, aerospace, defence, automotive and medical components.
Critically, what should be recognised is the considerable sums of money involved relating to tantalum alone in the electronics sector. For just mobile phone applications where each smartphone in 2010 contained tantalum worth a mere $0.15, the sales for this element were estimated at $93m, so values of the current market can be exponentially referenced by the incredible growth of current mobile sales worldwide.
Laser Induced Breakdown Spectroscopy (LIBS) can be most effectively used to offer companies geochemical ‘fingerprinting’, which in turn allows manufacturers to track mining locations, and therefore ownership of these mines.
This research, conducted in Germany and the US, offers clear scientific evidence to help manufacturers make the correct choice.
In 2016, AVX Corporation, a supplier of tantalum capacitors, announced a Solutions for Hope pilot designed to test new options for responsibly sourcing the 3Ts from Rwanda. Designated the 3Ts Due Diligence Options Pilot, the initiative is evaluating new diligence options: namely a new cloud-based due diligence process developed by the Better Sourcing Program (BSP) employed in combination with AVX’s Geological Passporting chain of custody system.
The BSP tool utilises a proprietary phone app to enable real-time electronic monitoring, chain of custody tracking, and issues reporting, providing much faster access to data than existing systems. AVX’s Geological Passporting system determines the mineralogical, geochemical and geochronological characteristics of ore at each mine, which is expected to validate origins, reduce smuggling, and reduce the cost of due diligence processes.
Playing your part
It’s important that for design engineers worldwide, especially those working for the multi-billion dollar companies listed in the Enough Project, for example, to specify conflict free minerals within their component selection instructions and bespoke designs.
Manufacturers of components using the 3TG elements need to employ procurement and supply chain management who are wholly committed to securing conflict-free minerals for their manufacturing processes with the final objective of wholly excluding conflict sourced product.
As consumers we can let our voices be heard by contacting key manufacturers to create consumer demand by insisting that the mobile phone in our hands is not contaminated with 3TG, and in turn contaminated with the suffering of millions of innocent people in the DRC or other parts of the mining community.