So called conflict minerals are used in nearly all electronics across the world, which got a lot of media space lately in the USA. Since then some companies have been working to minimize the use of conflict minerals, while other are doing less and some simply don’t care.
The term conflict minerals often refers to the minerals coltan, cassiterite and gold in eastern Kongo. Civilians are often forced by armed troops to pay illegal taxes and work in the mines, from where minerals are then smuggled out to be sold illegaly. The minerals are vital for making much of our consumer electronics and semiconductors, which made the topic a hot potato a while back.
Enough Project has performed measurements on 24 major manufacturers to investigate their efforts to avoid these minerals. Intel is in the top and gets a score of 60, on a scale from 1 to 100 based on Enough Project’s certeria. On second place we find HP with 54 points. Third we have Philips and Sandisk that both score 48 points, while AMD lands a fifth place with 44 points.
In the bottom we find Canon, Nikon and Sharp with a common score of only 8, while HTC is at just 4 points. Worst of them all is Nintendo that scores 0 points and apparently it has not lifted a single finger to try and avoid material from the conflict region. That many Amiercan companies have improved is much due to a new law in the USA, but the law is not without critics, which claims it doesn’t get to the bottom of the problem and instead contribute to reducing the legal export. Much of the efforts going into working against the use of conflict minerals are according to Enough thanks to the consumers, that have urged companies to invest in new equipment that minimize the use of conflict material.
No active posts found.