Going green on the backs of children

[Barklessdog]

I find it ironic after I started doing research on cobalt. At my new job I am in charge of magnet product development and safety, so I am learning all this stuff about nickel and cobalt - alnico magnets.

Cobalt prices have been really going up, so I did some research out of curiously about cobalt.

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/cobalt-children-mining-democratic-republic-congo-cbs-news-investigation/

It turns out the republic of Congo hold 90% of the world's supply of cobalt that is used in just about every rechargeable battery.

Not all cobalt is mined by children, but there is little control of anything in the war torn Congo.

There are strict world mining regulations on every metal except cobalt.

I just find it ironic all these people driving Nissan Leafs, Tesla's etc, feeling like they are doing something great for the environment, possibly built on the back of child labor.

My I pad battery is low, I better go charge it....

[amptech]

I love cobalt myself😊 I spent some time researching it too.  The cobalt mining situation have been iffy for ages. It's nothing new that people turn their blind eye when it comes to harvesting nectar from our planet... Some of the veterans on the local speaker factory told me about mining (and price) issues they had regarding cobalt in the 70's. After 'going ferrite' back then, they never thought they would build alnico speakers again. Now it's top of the line 👍

[Dave W]

Zimbabwe is also rich with important but scarce minerals, especially chromium ore. I've read that children there are forced to mine for diamonds, so it wouldn't be surprising if they were also used to mine precious metals.

[Barklessdog]

Toyota is spear headinging changing their batteries from being cobalt based.

China has most of the lithium and neodymium mines as well.

[uwe]

I'm not defending child labor, but before the West set out on its children's rights crusade ...



This pic stems from 1911. In Pennsylvania, not Congo and not Zimbabwe.

Not sure what the US reaction would have been had someone called for a boycott of Pennsylvania coal back then due to the prevalence of child labor. Also not sure whether the burning of wood for fuel and the further diminishing of US forests would have been the long run better alternative.

And before you all hit me for my - admittedly - relativist views: Yes, child labor is an evil, but also a common stage as a society climbs up the industrialisation ladder - it also ensures the survival of poor families there under the prevailing conditions. The choice there is having the kids go to work so the family has enough to eat as opposed to the children not working and the family starving. If you want to skip that rung, you will have to channel (much) more money into these countries and pay their products/natural resources fair prices plus engage in "nation building" so that the money coming in benefits more than just a corrupt elite. And we all know what a successful concept "nation building" has been in recent times.

The Western World radically and ruthlessly altered its natural environment over many hundreds of years to make it suitable/convenient for our modern industry and services societies as we now move into the digitization era. We had children work in our coal mines so we could get more of that vital modernizing ingredient that is coal cheaper and quicker. And now we tell countries that are 100-200 years (or more) behind us that they should please sacrifice their development for our conscience? And that we know better what is good for them (haven't we always?). That reeks of colonial paternalism to me and if I was from Congo or Zimbabwe I'd be severely offended.

[Granny Gremlin]

Toyota is spear headinging changing their batteries from being cobalt based.

China has most of the lithium and neodymium mines as well.

Yes, China's has the market for Neodymnium cornered to such a point that they have been able to steadily raise prices over the last few years.  This in turn has made some of my favorite bargain hifi speakers doubl;e-triple in price.

[Dave W]

Ever heard of the Shorpy website? It's a great repository of vintage large format black and white photographs.

It was named after Shorpy Higginbotham, a child coal miner who was identified by name in four photos from 1910.

[westen44]

From 100 years ago.

https://www.theatlantic.com/photo/2015/07/child-labor-in-america-100-years-ago/397478/

[Barklessdog]

[uwe]

That was hard watching - though child labor is nothing new in the country that used to be Zaire (remember I lived there for three years). But the health and safety conditions are of course abysmal - for adults or children. Nothing will change until you get proper governments in there that actually create and enforce minimum standards for mining workers. The West (and China too) will ultimately pay - if grudgingly - higher prices to get their hands on the scarce material, but they won't do it voluntarily. And simply paying more for the cobalt won't help if not at least some of the money goes into better working conditions.

[Pilgrim]

A couple of years back I went to an most interesting presentation about the availability of rare minerals; it turns out that a big percentage of the metals and rare materials used in cell phones and other recently emergent technologies are only found in 3rd world countries. We can expect their availability to be expensive, and the US will have little or no control over it, because by the whims of geology, most of this stuff just isn't found in the continental US.

Down the road we will undoubtedly wish we had done a much, much better job of capturing and recycling these metals as the resources diminish. They are, of course, finite.

Not a happy note, but reality.