By Deirdre Robert
Posted on April 8, 2011. Listed in:
I have an iPhone and I’ll admit freely to absolutely loving it. Likewise, I’ve used an iPad for work and have become enamoured with the technology. But while it seems easier to live in this technological bliss without thinking about the true impacts owning this technology might have on the greater good, this article by Leon Kaye, from the site TriplePundit, is a good reminder of the true associated cost of this technology, particularly around what are referred to as “conflict minerals”. He explains why the launch of programmes like the Conflict-Free Smelter (CFS) are leaving tech companies, including Apple and Intel, with no choice but to clean up their material sourcing act. But the conflict wont stop there either...
Apple and Intel Cease Use of Conflict Minerals
By Leon Kaye
With global demand for electronics surging—especially for tablet computers like Apple’s iPad—these gadgets’ sophistication and long battery life have created a huge market for rare earth minerals, often associated with global conflicts. Elements like copper and even rarer tungsten, neodymium, dysprosium, coltan, and terbium are tagged with the “conflict” label because of their concentration in the eastern regions of the Democratic Republic of Congo. This area that borders Rwanda has been the scene of a war that supposedly concluded in 2003, but still produces hostilities between various warring factions. Much of the fighting has been funded by the extraction of these conflict minerals, and children have found themselves forced into the dirty and dangerous work required to ready these elements for export.
