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posted by janrinok on Tuesday December 26 2017, @02:14PM   Printer-friendly
from the downside dept.

One of the big changes facing the global transportation industry is electrification. Big corporations and car manufacturers are ditching combustion engines, with Toyota saying it will have an electrified or hybrid version of all vehicles by 2025. But there is a dark side to this revolution.

Cobalt is one of the key ingredients added in electric batteries, and more than half of it is currently mined in the Democratic Republic of Congo. Amnesty says children as young as seven work in dangerous conditions in Congo cobalt mines.

"At the present time, you'd have to say that there isn't a lot of regulation around the mining of cobalt," says Gavin Wendt, the founding director and senior resource analyst at Australia-based Minelife.

Wendt thinks recent international scandals in the car industry have put pressure on car manufacturers to ethically source the materials needed for their cars.

"We're seeing more and more ... pressure from society to ensure that these commodities are ethically sourced ... A very big issue is going to be where this cobalt will come from, and hence companies are looking to source cobalt outside of the DRC as much as possible," Wendt says.

With 54 percent of cobalt currently coming from the Congo, that goal is still a long way off.


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  • (Score: 2, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 26 2017, @03:09PM (3 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 26 2017, @03:09PM (#614311)

    Yep. The children mining cobalt and diamonds are doing so because it is the best and safest income available to them and their family. Often, after being "rescued" by western charities, these children jump on another truck and go right back to work at the mine. If it weren't for the mine, many of them would instead have to take to crime, or join a militia, else their families starve.

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  • (Score: 3, Insightful) by nobu_the_bard on Tuesday December 26 2017, @05:11PM (2 children)

    by nobu_the_bard (6373) on Tuesday December 26 2017, @05:11PM (#614355)

    Then the real solution is to offer a better choice, not to ban the existing one, and leave them to whatever the worse option is.

    • (Score: 1, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 26 2017, @10:27PM (1 child)

      by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 26 2017, @10:27PM (#614469)

      I await your socially conscious ideas to give these children gainful employment. /snarc

      • (Score: 3, Interesting) by JoeMerchant on Wednesday December 27 2017, @03:05PM

        by JoeMerchant (3937) on Wednesday December 27 2017, @03:05PM (#614750)

        How about reforming the existing industry to be less hazardous to the workers?

        Kids wanna work in mines? Fine, let the kids work in the mines - that's a choice.

        Mines wanna operate hazardously? Not so fine, let the mines charge a little more for their ore so they can operate without being a serious health hazard to their workers. This one passes the costs out to the developed world to cover the increased cost of not killing the miners in the name of cheap product.

        China wants to buy Cobalt from the lowest cost supplier, which happens to be the hazardous mine? That would be their choice, too. I think if there are safer mines operating alongside, the workers would tend to choose to work for the safer mines first - and China might have some supply quality issues with their more cheaply sourced Cobalt, or maybe not.

        The US/EU doesn't control the world, and shouldn't operate under the delusion that it does. On the flip side, the US/EU does control their imports and hopefully has outgrown their colonial exploitation phase - they're not boots on the ground forcing people at gunpoint anymore, but they're still controlling people with money.

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