Congalese conflict minerals and sky mobile

[user1497480444]

I have just hears an advert for sky mobile offering a phone contract in which you get a new phone delivered every year, the "latest" handset, and I an't help wondering how many people are aware of the sources of the minerals we rely on for our electronics.

miners in the Congo, of both genders and ll ages, are living in conditions of total slavery to produce these minerals, "pay" often consisting of simply not getting beaten or raped.

I'm not going to go on and on about the conditions I have heard of, you can find it out for yourself. Suffice to say I contacted me MP some years ago, asking how I could be confident that the minerals in electronic devices sold in the UK were fairly traded and slavery free.

Their answer was basically, you can't. Conflict minerals are exported, mixed with minerals from other countries, and repackaged, so a consignment of minerals coming from ONE source country might in fact only contain 10 % minerals mined in humane circumstances there, and 90% from miners in the Congo living in slavery.

AIBU to ask you not to subscribe to this culture of using and throwing away and replacing devices that have literally cost lives to produce? It is not necessary. You can make your phone last more than a year, it isn't a good thing to get a free replacement handset annually.

There are fairly traded phones on the market. I appreciate they might not always be what you are looking for in a hand set, but worth considering, surely?

And the better they do, the more pressure will be put on manufactures to GUARANTEE human treatment for the workers supplying the raw materials for their products.

( By which I don't just mean produce a certificate to say their minerals have been exported from an "approved" country, but to demonstrate the actual ORIGINS of those minerals)