Our mobile gadgets designed in California and assembled in China, once were a handful of minerals, in everyday life represent a relatively small value. Typically, the minerals for production of raw materials are purchased in the countries of third world. Central Africa took a considerable place among the suppliers of “gifts of the Earth” in recent years, and in particular, the Democratic Republic of the Congo – a country where bloodshed in no small measure is due to natural resources.
Leading companies in high-tech industry officially abandoned the procurement of minerals from the Congo, as well as other countries of Central Africa, where the struggle for control over deposits regularly turns into fighting. Gold, tungsten and tin ore are under the restriction. New rules came into force due to the efforts of the two industrial associations: «Civil Coalition of Electronic Industry» (EICC) and «Global Initiative for Environmental Sustainability» (GESI). Apple plays an important role in both.
CFS program aims to identify and collaborate with those plants that are able to prove that their materials have been received from sources that warm up the conflict in the Democratic Republic of Congo.
A kind of «independent third party» will make a certification of such plants. Completely nobody will overlap the supply of materials from the Congo, but now the origin of raw materials will be checked from the top. Apple will have to get used to some of the financial costs that will inevitably appear with the introduction of new restrictions. However, at the same time, according to experts, Congo will take the greatest tall: until a certification mechanism is not specified, the work can lose up to 10,000 workers in the mines.
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