The unacknowledged inconsistencies within the lives of many radical 'activists' never ceases to amaze me. They are made more bizarre because they are the ones aiming for unachievable moral purity. The one I want to explore here is the smartphone. The 'activists' involved in Extinction Rebellion, Black Lives Matter etc all have their smartphones and are forever recording their activities to post on social media. The smartphone itself and the whole infrastructure of the internet / worldwide web they are using are not just some neutral background; they are major issues in themselves with direct relevance to ecological damage and treatment of the non 'white' populations of the poorest countries in the world.
Conflict Minerals
The manufacture of smartphones is dependent on raw materials which are a long way from ethically or ecologically neutral. One aspect of this is the use of so called ‘Conflict minerals’. The term Conflict Minerals refers to 4 elements – Tin, Tantalum, Tungsten and Gold – the mining of which is used to finance armed conflict in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) and surrounding countries. Many of the mines are illegally controlled by Government troops and militias which use the significant profits to further their own agendas and to perpetuate war though the purchase of weapons. The military personel involved in this are responsible for some of the worst atrocities and gross violations of human rights, including rape, murder and child labour. Civilians from local mining communities are forced to take part in this illegal mining trade. This impacts the legitimate mining which is crucial for the sustainability of the DRC economy, and to the protection of its people. It is very difficult to trace the origin of minerals being used so ‘conflict minerals’ ‘easily make their way into consumer products all over the world.
Child Labour
It is notoriously difficult to identify the use of child labour in supply chains because – to state the completely obvious – it is:
Deliberately hidden by those using it because they know it will impact on the saleability of their product
Looked for with just enough scrutiny for plausible deniability if it ever comes to light; but not so rigorously it will find it if there because it will push up raw material costs..
A 2016 investigation by Amnesty International exposed the use of child labour in smartphone supply chains. One aspect of this is child miners – potentially around 40,000 of them, some as young as seven – involved in extracting cobalt in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Cobalt is a key element used in smartphone batteries.
Recycling
Recycling is a very flexible word which is used very freely by those concerned with the environment without any thought to what it may actually mean. Most of the time it means no more than ‘I have put it in the designated recycling bin’. The main issue with recycling is tracing the contents of those recycling bins to their final destination.
Many toxic chemicals go into mobile phones, making their disposal a potential health hazard. This often takes place in the developing world, where labour costs and environmental standards are lower. Greenpeace and Amnesty International highlights the danger that some workers are exposed to when processing old mobile phones without proper equipment. Some major companies, including Sony and Nokia, have responded appropriately to this problem and are working to eliminate harmful chemicals from their products.
The difficulty of repairing old smartphones, keeping old equipment running on current operating systems and reusing the components means that keeping them in use, genuine recycling or feeding it back into the production cycle with a circular economy model is incredibly difficult.