The NOWYOUKNOW project
Mining: slaves for the affluent world
Toiling in a gold mine
Women and children share the men's lives
Not only mining...
Toiling in a gold mine
Did you know that minerals can be found in products that we use in our daily lives?
For instance in objects such as mobile phones, MP3 Players, laptops and other electronic items.
Some of the main minerals used in consumer electronics are aluminum, iron, copper, nickel and zinc and other materials like gold, cobalt, gallium, tin, tantalum, tungsten, beryllium, indium, platinum, palladium and rare earths are also essential in the manufacture of these products.
These minerals come from the depth of the Earth and are taken by miners.
Often these miners are slaves who every day risk their lives and are forced to work in dangerous conditions without any safety system for long hours.
The salary of these workers is 5 dollars per day. Moreover these 5 dollars are often returned to the militia groups as repayment for food.
Where are precious mineral mined?
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GOLD: China, South Africa, Russia, U.S.
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SILVER: Mexico, Peru, China, Australia
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PLATINUM: U.S, Canada, Colombia, Russia
Which firms are involved in the exploitation of minerals in Congo?
Major brands like Apple, BlackBerry, LG, Microsoft, Motorola (that now is part of Google), Nintendo, Nokia, Panasonic, Samsung and Sony have all been linked to the illegal trade and exploitation of materials in Congo.
Greenpeace International, a non governmental organization, prepared statistics to establish which products are the ‘greenest’ in relation to the number of minerals that are used to make them.
In the image we can see that the ‘greenest’ firm is the WIPRO (an Indian electronics company), followed by HP, Nokia, Acer and the Apple.
Click on the image to explore the diagram in the original web site!
