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War, Murder,
Rape . . . All for Your Cell Phone
By Stan Cox, AlterNet
"As you crawl through the tiny hole,
using your arms and fingers to scratch, there's not
enough space to dig properly and you get badly grazed
all over. And then, when you do finally come back out
with the cassiterite, the soldiers are waiting to grab
it at gunpoint. Which means you have nothing to buy food
with. So we're always hungry."
That's how Muhanga Kawaya, a miner in
the remote northeastern province of North Kivu in the
Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC),
described his job to reporter Jonathan Miller of
Britain's Channel 4 last year. Cassiterite, or tin
oxide, is the most important source of the metallic
element tin, and the DRC is home to fully one-third of
the world's reserves. Some cassiterite miners work
on sites operated directly by the country's military or
other armed groups. Working in the same area are "artisanal"
miners who are theoretically independent, like
prospectors in America's Old West. But the cassiterite
they extract is heavily taxed by the soldiers—when
it's not just stolen outright.
With a land area as vast as that of
Texas, California, Montana, New Mexico, Arizona, Nevada
and Colorado combined, the DRC has only 300 miles of
paved roads. To reach one of the many cassiterite mines
in the virtually roadless northeast, 1,000 miles from
the national capital Kinshasa, Miller's team followed a
40-mile footpath that, he reported, was as "busy as a
motorway. Four thousand porters ply this route carrying
sacks of rock heavier than they are. Each of their 50
kilogram packs of cassiterite is worth $400 on the world
market. Government soldiers often force porters at
gunpoint to carry the rocks free of charge; if they're
lucky, though, they can make up to $5 a day." (Watch
Channel 4's gripping, award-winning report
here.)
So, why should we care? Because
without cassiterite rock and the other ores mined in the
Congo we would be unable to manufacture the linchpins of
our global "weightless economy"—computers
and telephones.
Greener phones, meaner mines
A horrific war among the DRC military
and various rebel armies officially ended in 2003 after
taking 3 million to 4 million lives. But fighting
continued long after that in the northeast, fueled by
mining profits. First-ever democratic national elections
in July have set up an October runoff election in the
DRC, along with great hope for the future. Meanwhile,
disarmament and integration of the armies is being
carried out. But soldiers frequently receive little or
no pay, and that provides a strong incentive for them to
squeeze what they can from the cassiterite business.
The majority of the ore moves through
illicit channels across the northeastern border to
Rwanda, enriching troops and middlemen along the way.
The U.K.-based organization
Global Witness has comprehensively documented the
impact of resource extraction in the DRC in a 2005
report that described "killing, rape, torture, arbitrary
arrests, intimidation, mutilation, and the destruction
or pillage of private property" that soldiers used "to
gain control either over resource-rich areas or over the
ability to tax resources."
Since the July elections, says Carina
Tertsakian of Global Witness, "labor conditions remain
pretty much the same, especially in the informal
sector." She says the DRC government now has slightly
more control over the mines, "but that's not necessarily
for the better." Despite pressure from the United
Nations and European Union to pay members of its newly
integrated armed forces more consistently, miners are
being treated just as they were during the war.
In a cruel irony, Western efforts to
make information-age products more environmentally
friendly actually boosted incentives for violence and
exploitation. In late 2002, the EU joined Japan in
banning lead from the solder used in cell phones and
other electronic goods. Traditional solder is an amalgam
of 63 percent tin and 37 percent lead, but lead-free
solder is composed almost 95 percent of tin. Partly in
response to that new demand, the world price of tin shot
up by almost 150 percent between August 2002 and May
2004, and has remained high since. As prices rose,
fighting in the eastern DRC intensified.
Killer coltan
This wasn't the first time that
fighters in DRC and Rwanda have reaped a mineral
bonanza. Back in 2000, a spike in the price of coltan,
an ore that is the source of the precious metal
tantalum, spurred feverish mining, profiteering and
suffering in the same area of northeast DRC where
cassiterite is mined. The DRC controls an estimated 64
to 80 percent of world coltan reserves, and the windfall
from mining those deposits funded a Rwanda-backed rebel
army of as many as 40,000 soldiers during 2000-2002. The
mining was also
blamed for destroying habitat of the mountain
gorilla; the gorilla population plunged by half in a
national park where coltan was being mined.
Global demand for coltan increased
with the growing use of tantalum in cell phones and
other electronic devices. Whereas cassiterite is
needed to make the products more eco-friendly, coltan is
needed to make them more compact. Capacitors made
with tantalum have an unmatched ability to hold high
voltages at very high temperatures. Because of that,
tantalum capacitors have been essential to the
miniaturization of cell phones and other handheld
wireless devices. At the time of the price spike, the
No. 1 destination for the DRC's coltan exports was the
United States. The prices of tantalum and its coltan ore
have fallen from their 2000-2002 peak, but continued
heavy demand from the electronics industry will keep
their value high.
Getting a signal—halfway
to the moon
There's not much tin, and only a tiny
amount of tantalum, in an individual cell phone;
however, explosive growth in the wireless market has
piled those metals up, milligram by milligram, into
countless tons. In 2005, worldwide sales of mobile
phones surpassed 200 million per quarter—that
means that factories are churning out 25 phones every
second, around the clock. Customers typically discard
and replace their phones every 18 months in the United
States, and that cycle is said to be down to 12 months
in Western Europe.
In the spring of 2001, some analysts
were expressing doubts over a seemingly outlandish
prediction that
1.7 billion people—one
out of every four on the planet—would
be wireless subscribers by 2006. As it turned out, the
planet now has more than
2 billion subscribers, and the industry would like
to sell a new phone to as many as of them as possible by
the end of 2007.
Two billion of those little phones
laid end-to-end would reach almost halfway to the moon.
And that doesn't count the vast numbers already buried
in landfills or abandoned in desk drawers.
As portable electronics acquire even
more innovative features and (somehow) grow even
smaller, their manufacture is sure to require even more
exotic materials. And, more likely than not, those
materials will come from some exotic location. Even
before the handheld revolution, the United States was
importing more than 70 percent of its tin, nickel,
platinum and chromium, and more than 90 percent of its
tantalum, aluminum ore, niobium and manganese. The EU
and Japan are even more dependent on imports of those
minerals, as well as silver, zinc, tungsten, gold,
vanadium and copper.
Battery and assault
Cell phones, laptop computers and
other portable electronics rely for their power on
lithium ion batteries, which aren't just made of
lithium. They contain copper and cobalt (often found
together in a single ore called heterogenite) as
well as nickel and iron, and generally have to be
replaced every one to three years. (Up to 6 million will
need to be replaced all at once with the recent recall
of Dell and Apple laptop batteries). The DRC has
10 percent of the world's copper reserves and 30 to 40
percent of its cobalt, and with the prospect of a stable
central government, the country's importance as a
source of those materials for batteries and other uses
is expected to grow.
The DRC's mines are in its
southernmost province, Katanga, which went largely
unscathed by the war that raged far to the north.
Nevertheless, artisanal miners work under conditions
that are only marginally better than those in the tin
and coltan mines. They crawl through incredibly hot,
cramped tunnels lit only by small flashlights or
candles, using only shovels or their bare hands as
tools. The BBC
reported last year that the Ruashi mine employs
4,000 miners, some as young as 8 years old, who "dig and
sieve from dawn to dusk."
Although transnational corporations
are now rushing in to exploit the heterogenite deposits
on an industrial scale, much of the ore is still being
extracted by artisanal miners like those in Ruashi.
Global Witness explained the danger in a July 2006
report:
Deaths usually occur when miners are
digging holes—sometimes
20 meters or deeper—then
digging horizontal corridors, known as kalolo or
galleries, as they follow the cobalt or copper veins.
The kalolo sometimes extend over stretches of more than
50 meters. . . . Those who remain at the top are usually
the first to spot signs of crumbling earth and try to
warn their colleagues of the danger—often
too late. As the mineshaft starts collapsing, they may
attempt to rescue their colleagues trapped underneath.
In some cases they succeed. In other cases, they have
themselves been trapped by falling rocks, injured, and
even killed in the process of trying to save their
teammates.
There is an expectation in Katanga
that after the October elections, foreign corporations
will move in, putting an end to the more dangerous
freelance mining. But the highly mechanized companies
will be able to employ only a small fraction of the
current artisanal miners, and, says Carina Tertsakian,
there are already reports of clashes between corporate
security guards and miners reluctant to surrender the
sites they've been working.
Scary old phones
The level of exploitation continues
to be affected much more by prices on the London Metal
Exchange than by international efforts to protect
workers or curb illicit trafficking of resources.
Tertsakian says, "Organizations and journalists have
created greater awareness, but I have to say we haven't
seen that awareness translated into action." Even when
Western manufacturers attempt to avoid buying Congolese
minerals mined under deadly and exploitative conditions,
they find it's not easy.
A great amount of the tin, coltan,
copper and cobalt move out of the DRC via such
roundabout and shadowy routes that it becomes almost
impossible for a company at the end of the line to
determine their origin. And human-rights-conscious
consumers are even deeper in the dark. You can't boycott
the assortment of metals in an electronic device the
same way you can boycott a "conflict diamond" with a
clearer history.
Demand for the minerals could be
slashed if customers didn't replace their cell phones as
often, and if when they did buy a new one, they no
longer treated the old one as disposable. A myriad of
for-profit and charitable organizations are now
collecting unwanted cell phones for resale, donation or
recycling. (Read the
list of those who have taken a pledge of
responsibility).
Yet the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS)
says that currently fewer than 1 percent of retired
phones in this country are restored or recycled. With
word spreading, that market may increase, and begin to
affect the new phone market. As the title of an article
in the current issue of Inc. magazine shows,
manufacturers are already concerned: "Three
Scary Words: 'Buy It Used'."
A 2004 California law requires
sellers of cell phones to accept return of the
instruments by their customers for reuse or recycling.
It was passed in the face of the industry's intense
nationwide efforts to defeat such mandatory take-back
bills. Nationally, all four top wireless companies—Cingular,
Sprint, T-Mobile and Verizon—have
voluntary take-back programs; however, a "report
card" issued in April by the Washington, D.C.-based
environmental group Earthworks gave those programs an F.
Of the stores Earthworks visited,
only 30 percent displayed information on drop-off and
recycling, and only 50 percent of company
representatives provided accurate information on the
program. And companies could not verify that they were
handling the returned phones according to best
environmental and social practices, or that they weren't
simply dumping many of them overseas.
Kimberlee Dinn of Earthworks says her
group has seen some modest improvements in response to
the report card. "There's a little more visibility of
programs in the stores, more prominent mention on some
of their websites. But not a single company has been
able to provide us with statistics showing increased
recycling of their phones."
To handle returned phones, all of the
big four companies contract with ReCellular, Inc. of
Dexter, Mich., which, according to Earthworks, is the
only company to have been removed from the
Electronics Recycler's Pledge of True Stewardship
for noncompliance with its standards.
Dinn says California's mandatory
recycling law has been a huge boon to ReCellular, which
has grabbed 75 percent of the national market. CNN puts
its market share somewhat lower, at 53 percent, and
praises ReCellular for selling 55 to 60 percent of its
still-functioning phones abroad, largely in poor
countries where people can't afford new ones. That keeps
waste out of U.S. landfills but also raises a question:
If most used phones are being bought by people who would
not have bought one otherwise, is reuse really cutting
very deeply into demand for minerals, including those
mined under conditions of near-slavery?
Tiny treasure trove
Once electronic goods go kaput (as
they all eventually do), the metals they contain
represent a potential "treasure
trove," in the words of USGS. By their calculations,
the 500 million phones now lying unused in American
homes and businesses contain more than 17 million pounds
of copper, 6 million ounces of silver, 600,000 ounces of
gold, and 250,000 ounces of palladium.
The tin in the 110 pounds of
cassiterite a hauler in Congo carries on his shoulders
for 40 miles would make enough tiny drops of tin solder
to manufacture tens of thousands of cell phones. The
incentive to recycle that tin is boosted, of course, by
the presence of precious metals lying next to it in the
phone. But each device contains only a few cents' worth
of any one metal, even the precious ones. And unlike
aluminum cans, which are composed of a single, nearly
pure metal, electronic goods don't surrender their
diminutive, complex array of metals to the recycler
without a struggle.
Among the charges that Earthworks
levels at ReCellular has been that it ships nonusable
phones to countries where hand labor for disassembly is
cheap but environmental and workers' rights abuses are
commonplace. Dinn says, "You hear horrible stories from
Malaysia, Sudan and other countries—no
protective gear for workers handling the toxic materials
in the phones, work being done by prisoners."
But Seth Heine, CEO of the phone
recycling firm
CollectiveGood in Tucker, Ga., says the metals in
nonrepairable cell phones are well worth the costs of
collection, shipping and processing, and that it can be
done responsibly. Because CollectiveGood is "fixated on
following absolutely the most environmentally sound
procedures," Heine sends cell phones to an Antwerp,
Belgium, company whose standards are "higher than
anything in the U.S."
There, 17 different metals, including
tin, copper, and cobalt, can be reclaimed. But says
Heine, "No company's process at this point can reclaim
tantalum. That's frustrating, considering its tragic
history in the Congo."
On their backs
Reducing demand for coltan,
cassiterite, heterogenite and other ores—by
reusing, recycling, and simply not buying so damn many
electronic goods so often—cannot
by itself ensure safe jobs and living wages for people
in the Congo or anywhere else. But a seemingly
insatiable hunger for mineral resources can and does
distort economies in some of the planet's most desperate
locales. Relieving some of that distortion through
reduced consumption at least gives nations and people a
chance to build better lives independent of the ups and
downs of world commodity exchanges.
Back in North Kivu last year, Channel
4's Jonathan Miller asked some of the people trudging
along that muddy trail if they knew what the burdens
they carried would be used for. He reported, "Not one of
them knew their cassiterite was destined for the
electronics industry in the rich world. One man claimed
he knew: 'It goes to America,' he said, 'to rebuild the
Twin Towers and the Pentagon.'" I don't know whether
Miller told that man the real story—that
within only a year or two, much of the tin in the rocks
on his shoulders, having served its purpose in the
information economy, would end up lying unused in a
dresser drawer or trash heap.
Source:
http://www.alternet.org/story/41477/
Stan Cox is a plant breeder and writer in Salina,
Kan.
posted 27 September 2006 * *
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update 26 July 2008 |
