{"id":962,"date":"2016-10-04T11:01:16","date_gmt":"2016-10-04T09:01:16","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/mukom.mondragon.edu\/ecoingenieria\/?p=962"},"modified":"2016-10-04T11:05:25","modified_gmt":"2016-10-04T09:05:25","slug":"the-dark-side-of-mobile-phones","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mukom.mondragon.edu\/ingenieria-eco-tecnologias-industriales\/en\/2016\/10\/04\/the-dark-side-of-mobile-phones\/","title":{"rendered":"The dark side of mobile phones"},"content":{"rendered":"

It makes sense to think that using a smartphone is a benefit for the planet, since it can replace so many other products, such as notebooks, alarm clocks, music players, radios, photo or movie cameras, videogame players, GPS and, even, TV remote control. So instead of buying all these devices we can get it all in one. Sound very eco-friendly and sustainable, right?<\/p>\n

Obviously, not everything is so shinny in the mobile phone market. Mobile phones (or cellular if in America, both north and south) have a dark side that we very often don\u2019t know or simply prefer to ignore.\u00a0 Or, better said, they have a couple of dark sides, each one of them having a completely different impact (and we\u2019re not talking exclusively about environmental impact here). We\u2019re going to talk about some of these here.<\/p>\n

Materials and wars. <\/strong><\/p>\n

\"eco<\/a>

source: Muy Interesante<\/p><\/div>\n

Mobile phones require materials that, very often, can only be found in \u201cconflictive\u201d countries. The picture here illustrates all these materials and their functions. As one can imagine, the situations in the mines that provide those materials and in general in those countries are not always nice nor beneficial for anybody.<\/p>\n

There are countries like the Democratic Republic of Congo where war has been devastating the country for years. Nobody really knows the origin of the dispute: there are rumours that China may be behind it, in its effort to obtain soil where it can grow food for a possible global food crisis that has been mentioned for couple of years now (due to, amongst other reasons, the fact that most of Chinese waters are polluted. That\u2019s a subject for another day.) But there are also rumours that some companies (and not countries, since companies are above countries) are behind all of this, trying to get hold of the natural resources of these countries at a low cost\u2026 so they can continue manufacturing mobile phones. That\u2019s the case of bauxite, casiterite or the more famous coltan.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n