Bangka, Indonesia
Tin
The social and environmental costs of raw resource extraction are not unique to the DRC. Since the iPhone requires so many metals and minerals, there any many mining sites around the world that suffer from the same inhumane working conditions and environmental degradation. One such place is Indonesia, which provides one-third of the world's tin, much of it from the island of Bangka. Tin is a dominant industry in this area; it is estimated that more than 20% of the islanders are tin miners, with a further 40% involved in a related industry, such as smelting or trading tin. Laborers work in illegal mud pits, searching for tin by hand. Hollowed pools are made from digging deep holes in the mud. Workers spray the muddy walls of the pit to loosen tin, which falls into the pool where other men wade around in search of the metal. The tin that a miner risks his life for to find in the mud pits is the same tin that lays in the iPhone next to you or the computer on which you are reading this. Here are the social and environmental costs of that tin.
Social Costs: terrible working conditions
Working in the mud pits is extremely dangerous. Landslides which bury alive and often kill workers are not uncommon. Activists estimate that between 100-150 people are killed each year in the pits.
Other workers are seabed miners. That is, they float on makeshift pontoons, made of wood, thatch, plastic barrels, and suction hoses, and, with only a mask and a plastic tube connected to a compressor to supply them with air, dive into the water, suck up the sand with a hose, create a ditch to stand in, and try and find 'kong' to suck up. It is an extraordinarily dangerous process, where risks include underwater ditch collapse, which buries individuals under the sand. It is reported that several men a mouth typically die from this risky process. Now many attempt to stay on the pontoons and suck with the hose from there.
Video Credit: Al-Jazeera
Environmental Costs
The environmental costs of the tin industry in Bangka are steep. Seabed mining is rapidly decreasing the fish population around the island, which people depend on not only for food but also for their livelihoods. Many locals have turned from being fisherman to miners, both due to the decrease in available fish and the lucrative business that is finding tin. Unfortunately, this shift only further increases the environmental strain caused by mining as more enter the tin industry. Due to seabed mining, now more than half of Bangka's coral reefs are in critical condition.
The environmental destruction is also felt on land. Land mining requires the land to be bulldozed, destroying forests, 77% of which in Bangka are already in critical condition. The bulldozed land is then hosed down and dug up which destroys the nutrient-rich topsoil necessary for agriculture and plantations, and instead brings acidic soil to the surface. Furthermore, the stagnant pools in the mud pits are breeding grounds for malaria and dengue fever.
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"Samsung and Apple have the power to help improve the situation [in Bangka]"
Economic Considerations
While shutting down illegal mines is a tempting solution to the environmental and social detriment to tin mining, there is also an economic consideration to be made. Companies involved in mining generate 60% of Bangka's revenue. The trade-off is that due to the destruction that mining causes, tourism is down 90% in the region.
The situations in Bangka and the DRC are not unique. The iPhone uses 75 elements on the periodic table. These countries are merely two examples of the costs of extracting TWO of those elements. If these are the social and environmental costs of just cobalt and tin, it begs the question...
What is the true cost of your iPhone?