Saturday, November 13, 2021

Mining in the Democratic Republic of the Congo to fuel electric cars

Caveat: The Guardian is a left-wing mouthpiece and as such articles by this media outlet need to be taken with a huge grain of salt!

The article largely relies for its "exploitation" effect only on the story of one single miner, who is hired by a subcontractor! Too make electric car drivers feel guilty is the one of the message of this article.

"... Last year [2020], about 70% of the world’s cobalt came from the DRC and the vast majority of that – 93,000 out of 100,000 tonnes, according to Benchmark Mineral Intelligence (BMI) – came from large-scale industrial mines. ...
He [the one and only featured miner] is employed, via a subcontractor, at Tenke Fungurume mine (TFM), one of the country’s biggest industrial mines, which is 80% owned by the Chinese company China Molybdenum(CMOC). ...
Stories of the harsh and dangerous working conditions endured by miners in the DRC’s informal, or artisanal, cobalt mines – of child labour and miners being buried alive as tunnels cave in – have provoked an international outcry in recent years, forcing the western technology and automotive brands that rely on the mineral to look for ways to source “clean” cobalt, free from human rights abuses. ...
The Guardian has tracked the cobalt supply chain from TFM and other industrial mines through a number of refiners and battery makers to some of the world’s leading electric car manufacturers, including Tesla, VW, Volvo, Renault and Mercedes-Benz . ..."

‘Like slave and master’: DRC miners toil for 30p an hour to fuel electric cars | Africa | The Guardian

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