8/31/2023 0 Comments Who mines cobalt for batteriesIn the past year, a Dutch advocacy group called the Center for Research on Multinational Corporations, known as SOMO, and Amnesty International have put out reports alleging improprieties including forced relocations of villages and water pollution. "And it's met with much muttering and shaking of the head and tuttering - and goes away again." Labor Department lists Congolese cobalt as a product it has reason to think is produced by child labor.Ĭoncern about how cobalt is mined "comes to the fore every now and again," said Guy Darby, a veteran cobalt analyst with Darton Commodities in London. Sixty percent of the world's cobalt originates in Congo - a chaotic country rife with corruption and a long history of foreign exploitation of its natural resources. Samsung SDI, another large battery maker, said that it is conducting an internal investigation but that "to the best of our knowledge," while the company does use cobalt mined in Congo, it does not come from Huayou. Paula Pyers, a senior director in charge of supply-chain social responsibility, said the company plans to increase scrutiny of how all of its cobalt is obtained.Īnother Huayou customer, LG Chem, one of the world's leading battery makers, said it stopped buying Congo-sourced minerals late last year. The Cupertino, Calif.-based tech giant said that an estimated 20 percent of the cobalt it uses comes from Huayou Cobalt. They, in turn, have produced the batteries found inside products such as Apple's iPhones - a finding that calls into question corporate assertions that they are capable of monitoring their supply chains for human-rights abuses or child labor.Īpple, in response to questions from The Post, acknowledged that this cobalt has made its way into its batteries. It moves from small-scale Congolese mines to a single Chinese company - Congo DongFang International Mining, part of one of the world's biggest cobalt producers, Zhejiang Huayou Cobalt - that for years has supplied some of the world's largest battery makers. The Post traced this cobalt pipeline and, for the first time, showed how cobalt mined in these harsh conditions ends up in popular consumer products. And the mining activity exposes local communities to levels of toxic metals that appear to be linked to ailments that include breathing problems and birth defects, health officials say. An estimated 100,000 cobalt miners in Congo use hand tools to dig hundreds of feet underground with little oversight and few safety measures, according to workers, government officials and evidence found by The Washington Post during visits to remote mines.ĭeaths and injuries are common. The world's soaring demand for cobalt is at times met by workers, including children, who labor in harsh and dangerous conditions. And he planned to mine by hand all day and through the night. A proud man, he likes to wear a button-down shirt even to mine. He grabbed his metal shovel and broken-headed hammer from a corner of the room he shares with his wife and child. This remote landscape in southern Africa lies at the heart of the world's mad scramble for cheap cobalt, a mineral essential to the rechargeable lithium-ion batteries that power smartphones, laptops and electric vehicles made by companies such as Apple, Samsung and major automakers.īut Mayamba, 35, knew nothing about his role in this sprawling global supply chain. And the red-dirt savanna stretching outside his door contains such an astonishing wealth of cobalt and other minerals that a geologist once described it as a "scandale geologique." The sun was rising over one of the richest mineral deposits on Earth, in one of the poorest countries, as Sidiki Mayamba got ready for work.
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