CLA - Cobalt related news, page-3225

The Glencore - Tesla news is one thing, the other is the lawsuit against tech companies for child abuse due to artisanal mining of cobalt in the DRC. Maybe one day people will realise that the abundance of the material in the DRC is a double edged sword. You can dig it up by hand there, but it's dangerous to do so. How do you prevent a poor country like the DRC from having artisanal miners? Beef up security in your mines? That'll cost money and still not permanently resolve the problem. The only sure way to do it is to make the DRC rich, bypass the corruption there, and eventually get money into the pockets of the people. It's impossible to achieve. So the end result is, a country where the material is abundant but you can't mine it.
Now consider a resource like the one CLA has. Deep in the ground, so you can forget about artisanal mining being a problem; you need proper equipment to get to it. Yes it will cost more to mine, but no more than the human cost when mining it from the DRC.
DRC cobalt may be cheap now, but it won't be if the human rights people get their way. The cost of ensuring no artisanal mining.... Think about what that will cost, then think about what we have.