Sustainable Electronics
Ranking of consumer electronics producers’ use of conflict minerals in the United States as of 2017*
also critical for the aerospace industry in the manufacture of jet-engine turbine blades. Tantalum serves the medical sector for several devices including heart pacemakers, surgical components and hearing aids. Casserite is a red ore from which tin is derived and used principally in electronics for plating and soldering circuit boards. (Please see Grand Theft Congo – DRC by Journeyman Pictures on YouTube). Wolframite from which tungsten is extracted to produce tungsten carbide is vital for electronics design engineers as it is so hard wearing. Used within rugged applications such as the vibration mechanism in mobile phones, for durable metal wiring and electrodes, it is also beneficial for lighting, heating and welding processes. Gold is a rare metal that is used for critical interconnect products in applications where failure is not an option.
Supply chain and legislation In April 2009, US senator Sam Brownback introduced the Congo Conflict Minerals Act - requiring electronics companies to verify and disclose the sources of casserite, wolframite and tantalum. Then secretary of state Hilary Clinton said that the world needs to do more to prevent the mineral wealth from the DRC ending up in the hands of those who fund violence. Tragically, this is largely against their own people!
President Obama with the support of US Congress signed this into law by passing the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act on the 21st July
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2010 which applies to all companies that report to the US Security & Exchange Commission (SEC). Within 18 months of passing the Act, any publicly traded US component manufacturer would need to disclose its usage of conflict minerals to the US Federal Government and they were also required to highlight the measures they were taking to minimise their use of raw materials and make public their use of conflict minerals from the DRC and adjoining countries. In 2011, the UN members unanimously endorsed the Guiding Principles for Business and Human Rights – stating that companies have the responsibility to make sure their activities do not contribute to harm and abuses. It took the EU a further seven years to sign into law the required legislation which took place in June 2017 with the requirement for EU importers to apply this. However, companies then had until the 1st January 2021 – providing them with a full three and a half years to adapt and adopt the correct supply chain protocols.
As the EU Law did not come into force until 1st January 2021 – after the Brexit transition window closed – it means for the UK it has NOT become an EU retained law and at present there is little or no legislation on conflict minerals in the UK. Are we to be the weakest link for a country that was the first to enshrine into law the abolition of slavery? Currently, the UK Tory government are considering the possibility of exempting themselves from the Human Rights Act by publishing a Bill of Rights. This Bill could repeal the Human Rights Act 1998. The British Standards Institution (BSI) is still
Components in Electronics December/January 2024 41
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a member of the European Committee for Standardisation (CEN) and CENELEC, which are two of the organisations that draft and amend EN Standards so yes EN Standards still apply to the UK despite Brexit.
The science behind verification of conflict and non-conflict minerals Verification is vital during this process of differentiation between conflict and non-conflict ore and scientific processes exist to do just this. Professor Richard Hart has developed a verification method using laser-induced breakdown spectroscopy (LIBS) that affords a geochemical fingerprinting methodology for such minerals. This process enables the generation of ‘fingerprints’ with a laser-induced plasma that breaks down samples into atoms, and then excites them
Child working in harsh conditions. Photo credit: The Enough Project
again to emit light at specific wavelengths. The resulting spectrum can contain thousands of spectral lines with distinct pattern recognition – allowing statistical analysis – as a means of registering subtle differences between samples. The real benefit is the undertaking of this complex analysis in real-time within the field – so making this both a viable and practical solution to distinguish between mining areas and ownership (essentially government or rebel).
The closed pipe principle adopted by leading companies Motorola’s Solutions for Hope project, launched in July 2011 in partnership with AVX, HP, Robert Bosch and Intel, is one
Article continued on page 42 Closed pipe principle in the DRC. Photo credit: AVX
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