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Will we ever be able to buy a fair-trade smartphone?

Source:April 21, 2012 | Belfast Telegra Release Date:2012-04-24 367
Medical Equipment
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Fair trade coffee is easy to find nowadays, but it is hard to feel good about where your smartphone comes from. The industry is beset by allegations of factory work abuse, of raw materials being sourced from conflict zones, and of generating mountains of electronic waste.

Taiwanese manufacturing giant Foxconn, which produces about 40% of the world's electronics products, including iPhones, has recently come under attack over alleged poor working conditions and high suicide rates at its plants in China.

At the beginning of April, the firm announced that its employees would be working shorter hours and enjoying higher wages. It is a step in the right direction but when New Scientist tried to find out whether an ethically produced cellphone exists, the answer was a resounding 'no'.

Most major electronics producers, Foxconn among them, have signed the Electronic Industry Citizenship Coalition. The US-based, international EICC code of conduct includes undertakings to abide by labour laws and lessen environmental impact.

Although much attention has focused on manufacturing, less is known about working conditions at the mines that supply raw materials for phones. In China, the world's main producer of rare-earth metals, mines are prone to cave-ins and child labour is common, as it is at mines in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. The DRC produces half the world's cobalt, used in batteries, and is also an important source of gold and the 'three Ts' -- tungsten, tin and tantalum -- which are present in circuitry in phones. Profits from mining these 'conflict minerals' often go towards funding armed factions.

But because US electronics companies -- the biggest buyers like Apple -- are going elsewhere, the price of minerals from such conflict areas has dropped by two-thirds, making them less appealing to rebel groups as a source of funds. Apple has been a leader in auditing its supply chain.

"In the DRC, there have been four million deaths in the last 10 years: there's a relationship between phones and that problem," says Bas van Abel, founder of FairPhone, a Dutch initiative. By working with communities in the DRC and online, Fairphone hopes to design what it believes will be the world's first mobile phone that will be both open-source and responsibly manufactured.

The question is: will you be prepared to pay extra for one?

(c) 2012 Independent News and MediaNike LeBron 16

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