From the late 1990s onwards, a genocidal conflict has been raging in the Congo with little notice from the West. Indeed, western multinationals have been deeply implicated in the brutal regional war that has claimed up to 5.4 million lives. At the root of the conflict has been yet another scramble for the Congo's enormous wealth of natural resources including timber, minerals, gold, and diamonds.
One of the most overlooked, but profoundly disturbing of these resources is Coltan, a tantalum containing mineral that is a key component of modern electronic devices such as cell phones, laptops, and media players. Coltan is mined from the same region as the habitat of the Eastern Lowland Gorilla, and illegal extraction has led to the steep decline of the overall wildlife population in the Eastern Congo. The exponentiating demand with the increasing disposability and affordability of consumer electronics has also fueled the conflict to new heights.
The whole sordid story is outlined in "Apocalypse Found" that speaks to the connections between "Coltan, cell phones and crisis in the Congo." The article starkly illustrates the relation between this catastrophe and our consumer habits in the following excerpt:
Earth Island Journal argues that the 2000 spike in coltan prices was caused by the launch of the Sony PlayStation 2 and a new generation of mobile phones. The irony of that observation was not lost on British Labour MP Oona King when she expounded, "Kids in Congo are being sent down into mines to die so that kids in Europe and America can kill imaginary aliens in their living rooms."
Major manufacturers such as Nokia have taken note of this, but they argue that because of third party sourcing it is often difficult to tell where your components are coming from (Nokia is however pushing suppliers on this). At the consumer end, cell phone recycling programs such as the Eco-Cell Initiative at the Toronto Zoo are beginning to make headway, but it might be worth unplugging your life to really get away from another nightmarish impact of our modern technologies.
