Human rights group: Nintendo tops conflict minerals baddies list
HTC, Sharp, Nikon also not doing enough to dodge use of war-sourced kit
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A human rights group has said that Nintendo, HTC and Sharp are among companies that don't do enough to ensure conflict minerals do not end up in their products.
The Enough Project, a part of the Centre for American Progress, put Nintendo at the bottom of its conflict minerals ranking in a report on sourcing minerals that are mined in war conditions amid human rights abuses.
"Nintendo has made no known effort to trace or audit its supply chain," the report stated baldly.
The Project also singled out Sharp, HTC, Nikon and Canon, saying that although they had started to look at conflict minerals, their progress was "far behind industry leaders".
The report scores firms on their efforts to figure out where the minerals and metals they use in their tech comes from and their attempts to get a conflict-free certification, as well as environmental rankings and support for legislation against conflict minerals.
Intel, Motorola, HP and Apple were all at the top of the list, having "moved forward to develop solutions despite delays in the legislative rule-making process by the US Securities and Exchange Commission - an excuse that many other companies have used to explain their lack of significant action", the Project said.
The report refers to the US 2010 Dodd-Frank financial reform law, which would require companies to disclose whether they use tantalum, tin, gold or tungsten from the Democratic Republic of Congo. The SEC is due to vote on 22 August on the guidelines needed to enforce the law.
Conflict diamonds from the DRC are a well-known commodity, but the large reserves of the minerals used in electronics that are in the country haven't had as much press.
With the new rules, firms will have to identify if there are any of conflict minerals in their products and if they are, the company will have to do a due diligence check to track them back to their origins. ®
COMMENTS
Dear God I hate the Enough Project
So the Enough Project and Global Witness push (in fact, devise and lead the campaign) to have conflict minerals tracing written into Dodd Frank.
All the experts in the minerals and metals world said "You're doing it the wrong way".
Instead of having every bloody electronics manufacturer in the world sign up to it generating vast volumes of paperwork just have testers at the 9 or 10 factories in the world capable of processing tantalite analysing it as it comes in. We've already got a database of trace elements, we can identify which mine the stuff comes from.
But Noooo! They had to go ahead and get written into law this much more intrusive, expensive and absurd system instead.
And now they're complaining because some people aren't using the new system yet. Oi, fuckwits, there's a reason for this. Because the SEC hasn't actually issued the rules under which the new system works yet! No one actually knows what they must do to comply with the new law because the new law hasn't actually been clarified yet.
And that is, of course, the Enough Project's fault. For they insisted that it must be in the law without ever bothering to work out what the law would be.
Result? Tens of thousands of central African miners are now out of jobs and starving as no one at all will buy the central African minerals. Whether they're from conflict sites or not: because no one actually knows what the system is to distinguish between them.
Did I mention how much I hate the Enough Project?
FFS, we don't even know whether we've got to account for scrap yet!
"Centre for American Progress" -- Run! Run! they are progressing!
If you need the materials
The buying public don't care a jot. If they did this would be an issue at the checkout .
Unless you run round in a kafta, wear sandals, wash once a week, live in a yurt, have a beard, eat organic, are a veggie, hug trees or vote liberal.
Liberal voters are of course an endangered species so no one of note ever complains anymore.
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