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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.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday December 27 2017, @05:53AM
Honestly, this is a labor issue, and it probably is foolish to expect it to be completely solved by the actions of someone from the investment and entepreneurial class. He can certainly offer some charitable help, but perhaps the best thing he can do is allow folks like the IWW and other labor activists to promote better working conditions, and then hire them. THEN you can go promoting stories like this one to shame your competition who is using the union busting competition down the jungle path.
Businesses at the end of the day need to remain competitive or you'll have nobody left to complain about because they'll be insolvent. Some like to echo the idea that it is not the responsibility of the oppressed to free themselves, but I'd argue that there's only so much door opening you can expect from the outside before you really just need to push it open a bit yourself and walk through.
Anyway, take that all with plenty of salt; I'm just pondering this all from the safety of my couch, where it's really easy to suggest people need to risk life and limb to improve their lot in life. All I'm saying is, history seems to reward those who have been willing to take that risk, and that superheroes are rare in nonfiction.