Hi!
I’m relatively new to the concept of fair trade. I hadn’t thought about it much before some time ago when i started reading articles about it and eventually found out about the amazing fairphone. Now I’m actively trying to find the right companies to support. I have recently heard about the so called conflict minerals, and I really want to find headphones that have been produced without the use of such. Any ideas?
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This is the only thing I’ve been able to find
http://investors.skullcandy.com/documentdisplay.cfm?DocumentID=14202
Yeah, I’ve found that too, but honestly it doesn’t seem to be enough…I guess it’s still something.
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In short: Currently, there’s no way to find out.
US law Dodd-Frank 1502 helps us much in this regard, as it forces companies listed at US stock exchange to annually report on usage of conflict minerals in their products. The last year’s reports (covering what happened in 2013) revealed that not a single firm promises to have conflict-free products, and I personally don’t expect much more in this year’s reports which are due in a few weeks. Regarding non-US-companies
At least, Intel’s CPUs are conflict free, and Intel’s promised to offer only conflict free products by the end of 2015. As far as I know, Intel don’t offer headphones, though.
The law defines - roughly - conflict minerals as tin, tungsten, tantalum, and gold which originate from D.R.Congo or neighbouring contries, and which’ trade or extraction finances conflict parties (apart from the government’s army). In this respect, even Fairphone probably contains conflict minerals, but remember that at least most tin and tantalum is conflict free and from Congo. That’s not what Intel promises. Intel will mostly probably source from different countries like Brasilia and Australia, which doesn’t help the people in Congo in any way.
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