Smartphones and Sustainability

  Nowadays, almost all the people in Japan use smartphones. It is so useful in many ways that the first thing that some people do in the morning is to touch their smartphones and check social media like Facebook. However, it might not be the first thing for them to notice that the metals contained in those smartphones are the result of child labor in distant countries. 

  Takeru Uno is a lecturer at a cram school for university entrance exams and the author of Leaning SDGs through Geography (translated from the original title), in which he discusses the problems of rare metals used in smartphones. Rare metals include cobalt and nickel, and unfortunately, they are found only in certain countries, which is the reason why conflicts over these rare metals occur. These rare metals are called conflict minerals or conflict metals. 

  How are the conflict metals mined? They are mined in about ten countries including Democratic Republic of the Congo. Then who are mining these metals? The answer is the children there, who are as young as seven years old and work twelve hours a day for just a few dollars. It is quite shocking to know that what happened during the Industrial Revolution in the latter half of the 18th century in Britain is repeating in other countries in the 21st century.

  So what is the relationship between the mining of rare metals and the SDGs? SDG 8.7 aims to end child labor in all forms by 2025. This target also refers to modern slavery, which is exactly the situation in Congo and other mining countries mentioned above. As this article is written in March 2023, we have only 2 years before 2025 to achieve target 8.7. 

  What do we need to do as smartphone users? Under the pandemic, using online tools to get education and work is now essential, meaning we cannot live without PCs and smartphones. If we cannot do without them, what we can still do is to make them last longer. Treat them with care. One of the reasons we learn about SDGs is to be able to imagine what is happening on the other side of the globe. Before throwing away another smartphone just because you want better functions, think twice and remember the children working under extremely dire conditions to get you the rare metals that you are about to throw away.