So I asked the PR director whether I could see the list and whether it has been audited: in other words, whether there’s any reason to believe that this is a step towards genuine transparency(10). Apple has still not named any of the companies on the list, or provided any useful information about its suppliers.
But, in view of its farcical response to my questions about Bangka, I began to wonder how valuable that effort might be. In a previous article, in March, I praised Apple for mapping its supply chain, and discovering that it uses metals processed by 211 smelters around the world(9). On Monday I asked him a different set of questions. Recent concerns about the illegal mining of tin from this region prompted Apple to lead a fact-finding visit to learn more.”(8) Why conduct a fact-finding visit if you’re not using the island’s tin? And if you are using it, why not say so? Answer comes there none.
This states, with baffling ambiguity, that “Bangka Island, Indonesia, is one of the world’s principal tin-producing regions. All he would do was direct me back to the webpage I was asking him about(7). He insisted that it should be off the record and for background only, whereupon he told me … nothing at all. The director of corporate PR refused to let me record our conversation. I approached Apple last week, and it felt like the kind of interview you might conduct with someone selling televisions out of the back of a lorry. The answer has been a resounding “we’re not telling you”. Mobilised by Friends of the Earth, 25,000 people have now written to the company to ask whether it is buying tin from the ecological disaster zone in Indonesia(6). The more it’s in the public space, the more other companies will decide to do something similar.”(5) Which would be fine, if Apple did not appear to be pursuing the opposite policy. The more transparent we are, the more it’s in the public space. Tim Cook, Apple’s CEO, claimed last year that “we want to be as innovative with supply responsibility as we are with our products. Samsung, Philips, Nokia, Sony, Blackberry, Motorola and LG admit to buying (or probably buying) tin from the island through intermediaries, and have pledged to help address the mess(4). So they approached the world’s biggest smartphone manufacturers, asking whether or not they are using tin from Bangka.
Without transparency there’s no accountability without accountability there’s no prospect of improvement. What they want is transparency on the part of the companies buying the tin extracted there, leading to an agreement to reduce the impacts and protect the people and the wildlife. Those paragons of modernity – electronics manufacturers – rely for their supplies on some distinctly old-fashioned practices.įriends of the Earth and its Indonesian counterpart, Walhi, which have documented this catastrophe, are not calling for an end to tin-mining on Bangka and Belitung: they recognise that it supports many people who would not find work elsewhere. Clean water is disappearing, malaria is spreading as mosquitoes breed in abandoned workings, small farmers are being driven from their land(3). On average, one miner dies in an accident every week. Tin dredgers in the coastal waters are also wiping out the coral, the giant clams, the local fisheries, the endangered Napoleon wrasse, the mangrove forests and the beaches used by breeding turtles.Ĭhildren are employed in shocking conditions. About 30% of the world’s tin comes from Bangka and Belitung islands in Indonesia(1), where an orgy of unregulated mining is reducing a rich and complex system of rainforests and gardens to a post-holocaust landscape of sand and acid sub-soil(2). Nearly half of global tin supplies are used to make solder for electronics. The question was straightforward: does Apple buy tin from Bangka Island? The wriggling is almost comical. When asked where it obtains its minerals, Apple, which has done so much to persuade us that it is deft, cool and responsive, looks arrogant, lumbering and unaccountable. Are you excited by the launch of Apple’s new iPhones? Have you decided to get one? Do you have any idea what you’re buying? If so, you’re on your own.
0 kommentar(er)
