Something on kids Cobalt mining for lithium-ion batteries :(

this is a problem for the countries where it's being mined, and for governments around the world, not for manufacturers who buy it. although they should certainly try to apply pressure in whatever way they can.

 

Are the kids getting paychecks from Apple, Samsung, Sony, or Others?

Bob Wilson

 

i hope so. and medical coverage.

 

And I remember going door-to-door to collect soda bottles.

Bob Wilson

 

all kidding aside, it's horrible of course. there are too many horrible things in this world. shedding light is a beginning, but i'm not in favor of witch hunt's either.

to carry it all the way out, the end users are just as responsible.

 

for all we know, children may be mining diamonds in south africa. we know they strap bombs to them in the middle east.

 

So, is there any promising research in alternate materials that don't require slave/child labor for batteries?

 

sure, but then those children will starve.

 

What is being mined isn't the issue. It is the labor laws and worker rights of the region where the work is being done. Cobalt doesn't need child labor to get out of the ground, or to be turned into cathodes for batteries. Neither does your sneakers or any of the goods you use.

 

Ah does the article say LG is getting cobalt there (for Bolt?)?
Somehow I was thinking most of the cobalt comes from South Africa.

 

"LG confirmed that Huayou is one of its suppliers of cobalt. "We requested our suppliers of cathode materials to confirm whether they used cobalt originating in Katanga in the DRC, and one of our 2nd-tier suppliers, Zheijiang Huayou Cobalt Co., Ltd. (Huayou Cobalt), has confirmed that their product contains cobalt originating in Katanga in the DRC.""
Does that mean the cobalt will end up in a Bolt? Maybe. LG makes batteries for a lot of different things.

 

I understand N. Korea is making cobalt but it glows in the dark.

Bob Wilson

 

...so my memory is so-so (uh-ho) it is central Africa where the cobalt comes from (per Wikipedia)

 

I haven't posted in ages - hello everyone - but I thought this was an interesting topic.

I did some research into China's relationship with the DRC a couple of years ago. It was one of the most depressing projects I've ever worked on. The DRC sounds awful: one of the few things to be said for Islamic State is that it's knocked the DRC off the bottom of places I'd like to live.

There are a few things that are worth knowing in this case:

More than half of the world's cobalt is in the DRC. So if we want things that run on batteries, we have very little choice about whether to get it from the DRC or not.

Most of the world's phone and laptop batteries are made in China. If I remember rightly, one company - BYD - makes something like 70% of mobile phone batteries. So China-DRC trade is a key part of the supply chain here.

If Apple or Samsung or Sony or LG or whoever thought their customers gave a s--t, they'd have socially-responsible supply-chain management. But they don't. And this starts right at level 1: many companies outsource their final manufacturing to Foxconn / Hon Hai, which is pretty much the worst employer in China. The supply chain for cobalt goes down at least eight levels from there, and probably more. It would be incredibly expensive to monitor every level of that supply chain, especially once we get into the DRC.

The DRC is, not to put too fine a point on it, f---ed. President Kabila does not control the country - he barely even controls Kinshasa - but does not care. He is off his face on coke, the whole time, and sits in a room, coked up, playing on an X-Box. Foreign companies bribe him and his "advisor group" (a bunch of people who control access to him and give him his coke) to get access to the country. But the country is controlled by regional warlords: once you've bribed Kabila's advisor group to get access to the country, you have to separately negotiate with (bribe) the regional warlord and his government.

Katanga, where most of the cobalt is, is arguably the least f---ed region of the DRC (this is as much of an achievement as being the tallest mountain in South Florida). Until September last year, Katanga's official governor (and real warlord) was Moise Katumbi (who is half-Greek - interesting Greek-Congolese fact there). He's now resigned as official governor because of some row with Kabila, but he's still really the warlord of Katanga. His government is probably the least-corrupt in the DRC (again, tallest mountain in South Florida). He can't be corrupt - he's a member of the FIFA Strategic Commission! So dealing with Katanga is hard, but not as hard as working in other parts of the DRC.

So you can't work in the DRC without being involved in corruption. And you can't work in the DRC without some very poor people being involved somewhere down the supply chain. I know BYD pretty well, and they're an unusually ethical company by Chinese electronics standards, but there's a limit to what they can do in keeping their cobalt supply chain ethical: ultimately, they have to buy their cobalt from Huayu or someone similar.

You could certainly argue that Huayu (and others) are being socially irresponsible by buying this cobalt without checking whether it was mined using child labour. But is it?

I think there are important questions to ask here. And I don't know the answers.

We could, theoretically, get our cobalt from the other countries that have some - Australia, New Caledonia (and if you've ever read anything about mining in New Caledonia, you'll know that that wouldn't be an ethical choice), Cuba, and others. Prices would rise, but I think we could live with that. (Could we?)

But do we want to do that? Amnesty says these kids should be going to school rather than working, and in an ideal world, I'd agree. But in a renegade province of an impoverished, ungovernable country, can they realistically go to school? Who's going to run the school? Who's going to pay for it?

And these kids are earning money for their families. Not money to pay for a new yoga mat or an extra soy latte: money to survive. If we take away their source of income and tell them they should be going to school, are we really helping them?

I don't like what's happening in the DRC. But I fear that claiming to care and telling electronics manufacturers that they have to clean up their act and stop exploiting child labour would make things worse, not better.

But that's just my opinion. What do you think?

 

This is just where cobalt comes from, for military or industry uses, right? Nothing new here, that's just where cobalt comes from all these years. I always felt we should do a better job of recovery and recycling cobalt after use. But we live in a throw away society. Recycling would be dirty industry and we want clean industry only (iphones, blogging, stuff like that).

Extractive industry is at best problematic. Can't live with it, can't live without it.

 

But the arguments being made against cobalt extraction in the DRC aren't that different to the arguments being made against electronics recycling in China or Bangladesh.

 

maybe if hollywood refuses to buy these products, change will begin to happen. susan sarandon can get things started.

 

...just listened to the long video...it seems US Trade Law may have a cobalt loophole....cobalt is not considered a "conflict" metal. Conflict metals are those which US companies are supposed to audit for child labor and other issues.

Leaves a lot to the imagination as to why Cobalt is not listed.

I am not personally aware if all Li batts need cobalt.