Know Thy Mobile
There is no shortage of good reasons to support various causes like the one mentioned in Sokari's blog. And there is little excuse in this day and age with information overflow at your fingertips not to be able to contribute. Kiwanja's mobile phone game is filled with nuances that highlight how entrenched we are in the problems of this planet but also how we can work within to help.
Working for WildlifeDirect is opening my eyes to so much. Although this is not new, it is becoming more and more apparent to me that for those of us who have the luxury of choice, we must train ourselves to become ethical consumers. The problem does not start in the rural area, or in poverty stricken urban ghettoes like Goma in Eastern DR Congo, or in savanna landscapes - the problem starts at home.
One such example is mobile phones. We need them, we can't do without them and they have brought so much positive to life for so many and there are countless examples like what Kiwanja and others are doing to prove it. We can also do our bit by making informed choices about what we buy:
(More information and links available on Animals and Ethics.)
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Know what you buy
what is the hell!!I agree that people should care a bit about what they buy other wise, they'll contribute unwillingly to 'finance' war in the DRCongo.
Please check also on:http://rumangaboyouth.wildlifedirect.org
Thank you so much.
Balemba
know thy mobile
We found out some cell phone companies that aren't using DRC coltan (or surrounding countries) but what about ipods and dvds too and of course laptops.. I think coltan is in those products as well.
I'll do some research on the puter, dvd and ipod companies and write them to see what they have to say.
coltan
Thank you again Dipesh for posting this story. Ethical consuming these days isn't easy and this one was quite a revelation.
I found a very good article dated in 2006. I pulled out a few highlights but it's a really informative and disturbing read and makes the reader think that nothing really has been done.
http://greatreporter.com/mambo/content/view/1322/15/
Today, tantalum capacitors are used in laptop computers, pagers, mobile phones and game consoles like Sony Playstation.
Although not considered dangerous, evidence is emerging that tantalum causes tumours.
Child labour has increased alongside the escalating demand for coltan. In some areas of DRC 30 per cent of schoolchildren are reported working in mines.
**this is disturbing as some of the cell phone companies that say they no longer use DRC coltan but instead get it from Australia
Eighty per cent of DRC coltan arrives at the Sons of Gwalia in Australia for processing at the Wodgina and Greenbushes mining plants. Sons of Gwalia listed their two sole tantalum customers as the Cabot Corporation of the USA and Bayer's HC Starck.
According to a 2004 US Geological Survey, America received 450 tons of tantalum imports, 57 per cent of which was imported directly from Australia.
Most coltan resources ended up in America, through Pennsylvanian-based Cabot High Performance Materials, who made $100 million a year from grinding coltan into powder for capacitors.
In August 2003, journalist and novelist Alex Shoumatoff gave a speech in New York on the ecological destruction of DRC and its indigenous gorilla population due to illegal logging and mining.
He stated most coltan resources ended up in America, through Pennsylvanian-based Cabot High Performance Materials, who made $100 million a year from grinding coltan into powder for capacitors.
Shoumatoff also implicated the Carlisle Group, the US-based global private equity investment firm fronted by George Bush senior. The board of directors lists among others ex-US Secretary of State James Baker III, ex-US Defence Secretary Frank C. Carlucci, ex-UK Prime Minister John Major and until October 2001 was the home to a $2.02 million investment from the Bin Laden family.
"Carlisle's biggest customer is the American military," Shoumatoff said. "A whole lot of coltan was just used in the attack on Iraq."
In June 2006 Norman Lamb described the 2002 UN report as a "damp squib", stating nothing happened to the companies indicted in the illegal coltan trade.
"The system is wholly floored," he said. "Public money is used to investigate then nothing is done.
"The UN says it has no powers of investigation and it is up to the individual countries to take effective action against those companies."
As Labour MP Oona King put it to an Independent journalist in May 2006: "Kids in Congo are being sent down mines to die so that kids in Europe and America could kill imaginary aliens in their living rooms."
tin ore versus Coltan
It may be that tin ore is now the preferred sustance for electronic gadgets over coltan. Same issues with child labour etc
The link in the blog piece that Dipesh gave above now has an add-on at the end updating the piece with the tin ore situation.
Thank you
tin ore versus coltan
Thanks for this Colleen. One thing that worries me a lot in Kenya is we have so many really really cheap mobile phones on the market coming mostly from China. People buy them because that is what people can afford. It is often really difficult to trace the origins of these items. But I would not be surpised if the viscious cycle is anything like this:
1. Raw Materials exploited from DR Congo
2. Manfuctures overseas
3. Dumped back in African countries...
vicious circle
Thanks Dipesh. I wouldn't be surprised either by the vicious circle you suggest. Even the so called ethical companies who claimed to clamp down on coltan don't seem to have a clue where their tin ore comes from, from what the articles suggest, so I bet not just the cheap cell phone companies are using these ill-gotten substances. It does seem that the trail is hard to follow once it leaves the Congo.