The price of success

Abstract

In a constantly developing world, where technological progress develops at the speed of light, with an emphasis on switching from conventionally fuel-charged to electrical vehicles, new smartphone models issued a couple of times a year and the possibility of AI potentially replacing human labour in multiple industries within the next decades, recent studies have come up on the ethical sourcing of the materials used for “the 21st century technological revolution”. Cobalt, a rare and shiny grey-blue metal, obtained from the enriching of nickel ores, is used in the manufacturing process of lithium-ion batteries, the well-known “rechargeable batteries” in modern-day technology. Since 2005, the world’s biggest producer of cobalt has been the Democratic Republic of Congo. The extraction process of these ores is done by severely underpaid freelance workers, most notably children under 10 years old, working in subhuman, hazardous conditions, under scorching heat, poison dust exposure and with primitive materials in unsafe mines, constantly subjected to collapse, for only a few dollars a day. While the news outlets and the laws in first-world countries constantly remind us of the importance of preserving the environment and an eco-friendly way of life, the dangerous and unsafe sourcing in the cobalt mines in the Democratic Republic of Congo, at the cost of life-threatening human and child labour, hides the potential of destroying the second-biggest rainforest in the world (“the lungs of the Earth”).