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Major Electronics Firms Support Ending Use of "Conflict Minerals"

Posted by Soulskill on from the americans-just-want-their-fancy-phones dept.

tburton writes "The US House of Representatives yesterday released the Conflict Minerals Trade Act (HR 4128) to try and end the international trade of tungsten, tantalum and col-tan, the mining of which is accused of fueling violent rape and murder in eastern Congo. Since the very same minerals power the most popular consumer electronics from HP, Verizon, Nokia, RIM and Intel, the Information Technology Industry Council has quickly signed a statement of support. Advocacy groups are hopeful these commitments prove to be meaningful as consumers begin to question the end result of the supply chains powering their favorite gadget."

4 of 198 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Hardly surprising by joaommp · · Score: 4, Informative

    Well, they could care. I don't know about the other minerals, but at least tungesten can be mined from Portugal, where... well, let's say things don't work as they do in Congo.

    --
    Onda Technology Institute
  2. Fungible Resources by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

    Hmmm, does anyone in Congress know what a fungible resource is?

    Basically, there's no way to know if the tungsten in your product (or even in your supply chain) came from the Eastern Congo, or pretty much anywhere else.

    If the price for "tungsten" goes up appreciably, then Eastern Congo "tungsten" will just show up indirectly from other sources.

  3. Re:Hardly surprising by Phil-14 · · Score: 4, Informative

    Not only that; there are a lot of unexploited Tungsten sources in the United States; one supposes they could stop nickel-and-diming to death extraction industries here and we could probably produce them a lot more cheaply than the Congo; doing business in a war zone is expensive.

    I also just checked Wikipedia, and I think this subject is sufficiently non-controversial/political that they will give accurate information; it looks like China produces several times the amount of Tungsten as the rest of the world _combined_.

    --
    (currently testing something about signatures here)
  4. Hate to be a grammar nazi.. by log0n · · Score: 4, Informative

    Seriously people, learn your grammatically-correct English!

    "... to try and end ..." should be "... to try to end ...". Try is the verb, 'try to' is the proper way of using said verb in a sentence. Otherwise, you're combining the two on the same subject.

    I'm going to try international trade of tungsten and end the international trade of tungsten.
    OR
    I'm going to try to end the international trade of tungsten.