Your Smartphone is the Product of Violence

This serves to hide the consequences that workers and the environment suffer at each stop; rather than poisoned rivers and slave labour, we see the happy face of familiar brands. As such, I want to take the time to explore some of the horrors involved in producing the device you are likely using to read this post. While it will be a difficult read at times, it is essential that we pierce the veil of globalized capitalism and know the true effects of our consumption habits, so that we may begin to challenge them.

 

Environmental and Health Effects

Each smartphone represents a treasure trove of valuable materials; out of the 83 stable, non-radioactive periodic elements, at least 70 are included in every device [3]. Some of the most valuable metals on the planet – like gold, palladium, platinum and silver – are essential for even the basic functioning of the smartphone, allowing the motherboard to translate your taps into signals the device can understand [4]. Others, like the rare earth metals (REMs) neodymium, terbium and dysprosium – which are easy to work with but exceptionally conductive and magnetic – are essential for your phone’s speakers to play Driver’s License for the millionth time and the vibrations that alert you to a new snap. Finally, cobalt and lithium are important components for the small, rechargeable, and long-lasting battery at the core of the device. 

 

Because they are only found tightly bound to other minerals, mining REMs releases huge amounts of arsenic, heavy metals and radioactive material into the surrounding environment, which can have horrifying health effects for the nearby population. China, which produces 86% of the world’s REM supply [5], is home to thousands of “cancer villages” in which “every other house contains someone dying of cancer or some sort of respiratory problem” [6]. The city of Baotou, home to both more than 2.5 million people and a massive mining operation, is one of the most polluted places on earth; a 12-kilometre long artificial lake holds the toxic sludge from the mine, seeping into the water supply, local farms, and the air. 

 

Even the more familiar elements, like gold, silver and iron have serious environmental and health effects. Mining them releases huge amounts of liquid and solid waste (full of toxins like cyanide and mercury), which need to be stored in massive dams which are often poorly constructed. Over 40 spills have happened in the last decade alone, including a 2015 disaster in rural Brazil which released the equivalent of 22,000 Olympic swimming pools of waste, killing 19 people, devastating several villages, and ripping through 650 km of jungle before reaching the ocean [7]. This is not even to mention the widespread dispossession of Indigenous land and forced displacement of local populations [8] as multinational mining companies (Canadian companies are notorious for this [9]) tear up communities and earth alike in order to feed our insatiable appetite for technology. 

 

Labour Exploitation

Smartphones are also deeply implicated in the appalling exploitation of workers around the world. In the Democratic Republic of the Congo, one of the poorest countries in the world, nearly 35,000 children work to mine for Cobalt, descending daily into pitch-black tunnels in which you cannot stand up, often for 12 hours at a time [10]. Between September 2014 and December 2015 alone, more than 80 miners died in these tunnels [11], risking life and limb for measly wages of $0.65 a day, if they are lucky; a significant portion of the workers are enslaved. What’s more, local warlords and factions that have split the country since its chaotic civil war in the late 90s use profits from the mining business to continue their bloody conflicts, with major human rights implications. 

 

Smartphones are also assembled in a hellish environment. Workers at factories across China owned by Foxconn International, a company that is responsible for producing more than half of all the world’s electronic products, march daily into facilities whose armed guards and barbed wire render them akin to a prison [12]. Workers who do not make their daily quota or who are suspected of stealing are subject to beatings, writing lines from the CEO’s book hundreds of times, or standing at the front of the room and publicly shouting how much of a failure they are. At some plants, workers are forced to live in on-site dormitories, without adequate heating during winters, clean water, or enough food, all the while losing nearly half of their pay for “room and board.” Conditions are so bad that several dozen workers have committed suicide since 2010, choosing to throw themselves from the roof rather than continue to suffer for our toys [13].

 

What can we do about it?

It is unrealistic to expect people to stop using smartphones, even after reading these facts: they are simply too important to modern life. According to one study, nearly a third of Americans would rather give up sex for a year than part ways with their phone [14]. Nonetheless, if the seemingly innocuous devices in our pockets are drenched in so much blood and suffering, it is important to reconsider our relationship with consumer electronics. Philosopher James Rocha has argued that doing otherwise – consuming as though our actions don’t have consequences for people or the environment – is a form of racism [15]. We here in Canada are not the ones suffering from poisoned rivers or brutal working conditions - it is racialized people in the global south, and so we turn a blind eye. Remember, racism consists not only of individual actions but also of the systems that oppress people. If you read this article and don’t think twice the next time you go to upgrade your phone, however, you are knowingly partaking in one such system. I know I’m being harsh (and Lord knows I’m just as guilty), but when so many lives are on the line, we can’t afford niceties. So what can you do, as an individual consumer?

1. Don’t upgrade unless absolutely necessary, and try to buy used devices.

2. Share this and other resources! Alone, we cannot force these companies to change, but solidarity can achieve great things.

3. Write to your MP and MPP demanding better regulation of global flows of resources and labour.

4. Volunteer with organizations that work to raise awareness and bring change to these systems.