Conflict-free sourcing
Apple, along with Acer, BT, Cisco, Dell, Foxconn, HP, Huawei, Lenovo, Microsoft, Sony and nearly 150 other technology firms, is a member of the Conflict-Free Sourcing Initiative (CFSi), an EICC project that has identified and audited conflict-free smelters for all four conflict minerals.
Program director Michael Rohwer calls it "a major milestone in the global effort to support an end to the conflict in the Democratic Republic of the Congo," while Sasha Lezhnev, senior Congo policy analyst with the anti-genocide ENOUGH Project, says that "having conflict-free smelters now available for all four conflict minerals is a tremendous achievement we've all been waiting for for years.
It means that electronics, aerospace and other companies can make informed choices on their supplier decisions… and it is critical that more and more companies begin doing so."
There's more to it than just identifying smelters, though. As Apple's Williams told the FT, while channeling demand through a few verified smelters would enable Apple to "wave our conflict-free flag," such a move "would do nothing to affect the workers on the ground".
Apple, like other electronics giants, believes that the solution is to get "a critical mass of suppliers verified so that we can truly influence the demand situation and change things".
Mbubi believes that Apple's naming and shaming policy, which highlights suppliers who refuse to be audited, is "courageous". "It is encouraging to see this disclosure taking place as it increases transparency in the smelting industry."
Laws and lobbyists
In the US, the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection legislation compels firms to report their use of conflict minerals.
As Mark Morley, director of industry marketing for supply chain experts GXS, explains: "The law means that any company submitting filings to the [US] Securities and Exchange Commission must confirm there are no conflict minerals in their supply chain."
Inevitably, some firms don't like that. The US Chamber of Commerce, the Business Roundtable and the National Association of Manufacturers are asking judges to overturn that requirement on the grounds that the reporting imposes unfair costs and infringes their right to free speech by "forcing them to condemn their own products".
According to Judge A Raymond Randolph: "there seems to be a slippery slope problem here… could Congress say that all companies now have to report the conditions under which their products are manufactured overseas, what the pay rate is, whether they are using child labour?"
Human rights activists are worried about this. Most firms aren't like the big-name tech firms who care as much about their brand image as their bottom line.
If the legal challenge is successful and firms aren't forced to disclose their use of conflict minerals, activists believe, then firms might not clean up their act. "If legal challenges to the Dodd-Frank Act go through," Mbubi says, "this will pose a serious risk of big firms continuing to line warlords' pockets."
Cleaning up
Intel has made a difference in a very short period of time - it started attempting to clean up the supply of tantalum in 2009, and by 2012 unaudited tantalum smelters were finding it difficult to sell their products. An issue that wasn't on most people's radar a few years ago now makes big headlines worldwide.
Organisations such as Congo Calling hope that conflict minerals will soon be as unacceptable as blood diamonds. "We, the end users, should continue to demand our electronics companies source their materials ethically," Mbubi says.
"We should start buying our electronic products based on ethical choices as they become available."
Lobbyists may try to neuter legislation such as the Dodd-Frank Act, but they can't stop us from voting with our wallets.
