Oregon Public Broadcasting

'Conflict Minerals' from a mine in DR Congo

You may have heard about 'conflict diamonds' ---  diamonds mined in a war zone and sold to buy weapons. But how about 'conflict minerals?'

These are elements like gold, tin and tantalum -- that are used in computers and cell phones -- but that come from mines in war torn countries.

The U.S. Senate just passed a bill blocking the import of so called 'conflict minerals' -- the House is working on its own version.

But as Kristian Foden-Vencil reports, some businesses aren't sure about the legislation. They say finding out exactly where a shipment of minerals comes from is easier said than done.

Picture a muddy hole in the hills of the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Dozens of men - and often children - dig with picks, shovels and hands under the watchful eyes of armed guards.

The area is far from any town and in the middle of a war zone, where millions have died.

Portland activist, Lisa Shannon of 'Raise Hope for Congo', has been there.

Lisa Shannon: "You have either sort of public mines and militias come and collect taxes at the mines. Or they mine them themselves, or they control locals and have them mine on their behalf.  And then they export illegally, very cheaply. And then those minerals are smuggled out through countries like Rawanda and Uganda and eventually make their way into smelting plants, where they're mixed with minerals from other locations and then they end up in our tech products."

Lisa Shannon and protesters at Intel plant

This morning, Shannon is standing across the street from an Intel chip manufacturing plant -- just outside Portland. Around her are about two dozen protesters carrying placards and jars of pennies. One of them is Ann Shannon, Lisa's mother.

Ann Shannon: "Don't tell me that no American consumer is willing to pay a penny a product to save human lives and keep the Congalese blood and suffering out of our computers."

What the demonstrators want is for the swift passage of the 'Conflict Minerals Trade Act.' 

It would require the U.S. government to map out all  mines in Congo, and then for the Commerce Department to figure out which ones are being controlled by militias and which ones aren't. That way, they say, businesses will have to be responsible for their supply chains.

There's a great deal of focus on the issue right now, because Congress is working on the act.

Like many consumers, the vast majority of U.S. businesses haven't given the idea of 'conflict minerals' much thought.

But Intel is an exception. It has been working to clean its supply chain for several years.

So as she waves her placard outside Intel, Lisa Shannon admits things aren't as simple as 'big bad business' versus 'plucky Portland protesters.'

Lisa Shannon: "Intel has been a model in some respects on conflict minerals. And we absolutely appreciate those efforts. They started a third party audit program for the smelters of tantalum for their supply chain. And that was a huge step forward. And it was amazing. I was very disappointed last week when I was in D.C. last week and learned they had been so heavily involved in the lobby effort to gut the bill." 

Chuck Malloy: "We're not."

Intel: Auditing their mineral supply chains

That's Intel spokesman Chuck Malloy.

He says the company isn't trying to gut anything. He says Intel is simply talking to politicians about the work it's been doing over the last couple of years to track the source of its minerals. 

He says Intel wants them to know that their efforts to track down where specific shipments of say, tantalum, came from is complicated and time consuming.

Chuck Malloy: "Every step of the way in a 10 or 15 step process of a supply chain we back tracked and said, where do you get your material and how do you know that it's clean, and how do you know that it came from this location or that location. And it's been a very painstaking effort and it's taken a lot of collaboration within the industry to get there. But 10 years ago, nobody knew. We have a much better picture of it now and we think we begin to understand some ways to address the problem."

Some ways — but not all the ways.

Pushed for a gauge of Intel's success so far, Malloy estimates it's about 50 percent of the way to finding a fix for its tantalum supply and 30 percent for its tin supply. 

Chuck Malloy: "We think we've identified a link in that supply chain, at the smelter level, that we can insert an audit process to ensure that the source of the material isn't in a conflict area. That's why we've just recently funded that tin program, to audit that tin program  to see if that actually works. And if it works, we can implement it on a much broader basis."

After tin, Malloy says Intel will start looking at cobalt then tungsten and then gold. It's a process that's going to take a lot of time and effort.

Meanwhile, he says, Intel is neither supporting nor opposing the 'Conflict Mineral Trade Act.'

Chuck Malloy: "At the end of the day if the political climate is such that that law gets past. Our approach at least will get some sort of relief and we'll be able to say to the smelters, that's not from a conflict mine is it? And they be able to say, no it's not."

Some industry groups are pushing for an alternative to the legislation. They say that if enough companies banded together to demand conflict-free minerals, smelters in China and elsewhere would be forced to clean their supplies.

It's a 'power of the purse' over the 'power of legislation' kind of argument.

Meanwhile the group 'Global Witness,' which tracks links between natural resources and conflicts, wrote to 200 businesses to see what they're doing about this issue.

Global Witness says most had absolutely no system to vet their supplies.