Major Electronics Firms Support Ending Use of "Conflict Minerals"

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."

Comments

Hardly surprising

[jcrb]

Is this of any surprise that the companies don't really care where their materials come from as long as they are getting what they want at a price they want?

Public exposure and "naming names" is the only way to have an effect on this behavior, both so people know the effect of buying a product from certain companies as well as making the companies fearful of the bad PR that will come from using such materials

Re:Hardly surprising

[joaommp]

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.

Re:Hardly surprising

[Phil-14]

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_.

Re:Hardly surprising

[Grishnakh]

How many of you use illegal drugs--which goes into the pocket of vicious and violent people.

The fault here lies solely with politicians, who have nonsensically made these drugs illegal. They tried banning drugs back in the 30s with Prohibition, and it didn't work. It created a huge black market, with lots of violence. Why do they keep trying to repeat history? Users are not to blame for the violence; only politicians and those who support them are.

If the government decided to ban ketchup one day, and this created a black market and violence, would you still blame ketchup consumers for the violence?

This will do nothing to end the "conflict".

[John Hasler]

The fighting is about politics, not minerals. This will just make everyone in the region poorer. The minerals will continue to come out albeit at a reduced rate while yet another layer of criminal politicians seize the opportunity to enrich themselves by falsifying the documents necessary to get the stuff on the legal market.

This is just more feelgood crap from the assholes in Washington.

Just like conflict diamonds?

[Anonymous Coward]

This will work just as well as all of those useless "conflict diamond" resolutions that have accomplished nothing more than forcing DeBeers to launder its African blood diamonds through its "mines" in Canada.

The big miners will "discover" mines in some "friendly" country and just launder the stuff through them, just like they have done with diamonds.

*sigh*

Irony

[shareme]

How ironic that we than ask China to supply the same minerals who has similar Human rights abuses.. US House of Representatives ..palm to face..

Re:Irony

[Grishnakh]

You've got to be kidding. China is no paragon of human rights, but they certainly don't abuse them to the extent seen in war-torn African countries, where rape and murder are common. The only thing that China does that sucks is that they practice censorship, keeping strong control over the media. They're also quick to use the death penalty, but that's not really that bad; they're not executing innocent fishermen, they're executing convicted criminals. Yes, Tianenmen was bad, but that was a long time ago. They haven't had any incidents like that in quite a while (and with today's technology, including iPods with video recording, it would be much harder to keep such a thing covered up). China's government is all about building up the country for the benefit of the people, and keeping strong control over social order. Their methods are harsh, but their intent is basically positive. They believe their methods are necessary in their culture to achieve the goals they've set. Trying to turn someplace like Iraq, for instance, into an advanced country would require similar methods, as democracy would never work there. To compare China to African warlords who are all in favor of genocide is just insulting.

Yeah this work like the Drug War

[commodore64_love]

We all know that banning the use of marijuana, cocaine, and other naturally-occurring drugs helped de-escalate violence.

/end sarcasm

The banning of these conflict minerals simply means that you'll leave former miners without jobs, and then they'll starve, as happened when we embargoed Iraq in the 90s, and Cuba over the last several decades. I honestly don't think there's ANY workable solution to the Congo problem.

No Surprise and years to late !

[Rotorua]

This is so DATED.... I work for a component manufacturer and NOBODY I repeat NOBODY has used anything from Congo for YEARS..... All the big boys demand that we prove the source of our Col-tan and provide a certified route to source Again this is the same as the Blood diamonds ... years to late !!! ----

Fungible Resources

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

They might as well rename it

[zogger]

To the "Turn over to the Chinese all the minerals in Africa" act. They'll take them, and they do not care one bit about which local regime is in charge today. They go out of their way all the time to state they have no desire to interfere in local politics, they just want the business/raw materials.

Oh, by the way, how about they ban petroleum products, fuels and plastics? Or do they want to claim petroleum doesn't come in huge part from regimes where human rights are routinely abused, where murders rapes torture and so on are common?

Re:You would have to name everybody

[TheGavster]

Rather than blaming a technology for requiring a particular mineral, or an industry for producing such products, does it not make more sense to blame the people killing and repressing populations over the minerals for any bloodshed? I'm sure that the assholes running their little war bands in the Congo will find something else to murder and repress over, just as tribal kingdoms in the region have for much of history.

Hate to be a grammar nazi..

[log0n]

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.