Why is Apple so shifty about how it makes the iPhone?

[unhappycamper]

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/sep/23/apple-shifty-about-making-iphone



The paragon of modern tech risks losing its shine by dodging queries about Indonesia, and an orgy of unregulated tin mining

Why is Apple so shifty about how it makes the iPhone?
George Monbiot
The Guardian, Monday 23 September 2013 15.30 EDT

Are you excited about the launch of Apple's new iPhones? Have you decided to get one? Do you have any idea what you're buying? If so, you are on your own. When asked where it obtains its minerals, Apple, which has done so much to persuade us that it is deft, cool and responsive, looks arrogant, lumbering and unaccountable.

The question was straightforward: does Apple buy tin from Bangka Island? The wriggling is almost comical.

Nearly half of global tin supplies are used to make solder for electronics. About 30% of the world's tin comes from Bangka and Belitung islands in Indonesia, where an orgy of unregulated mining is reducing a rich and complex system of rainforests and gardens to a post-holocaust landscape of sand and acid subsoil. Tin dredgers in the coastal waters are also wiping out the coral, the giant clams, the local fisheries, the endangered Napoleon wrasse, the mangrove forests and the beaches used by breeding turtles.

Children are employed in shocking conditions. On average, one miner dies in an accident every week. Clean water is disappearing, malaria is spreading as mosquitoes breed in abandoned workings, and small farmers are being driven from their land. Those paragons of modernity – electronics manufacturers – rely for their supplies on some distinctly old-fashioned practices.


http://www.foe.co.uk/resource/reports/tin_mining.pdf

[NYC_SKP]

1. I would like to see a breakdown of who does and who does not use tin from Bang and Belitung.

Apple is such a big target.

Does Samsung, or Sony, as examples, NOT use solder containing tin from these places?

[progressoid]

3. Yep.

I don't own any Apple products, but odds are I own something that contains minerals from these mining operations. As does almost everyone else in the first world.

[Not Sure]

2. To answer the question posed in the OP's title

because if they did it right, nobody could afford it, especially after you factor in the 50% premium they charge for the apple logo.

[Canuckistanian]

4. To be fair..

Apple probably does NOT buy tin directly themselves. But their contractors, such, as Foxconn do. Even then, Foxconn buys tin solder from their own subcontractor. And those subcontractors could change at any time. So it would be difficult to know exactly where the tin comes from.

And Foxconn manufactures for many device companies. Every piece of electronics you own probably has a part made by Foxconn.

I get the point, though. These tin mines are an abomination. Singling out Apple for this is a bit unfair when ALL electronic makers probably do it as well.

[WCGreen]

5. If there was only an Ap for that...

[coldmountain]

6. Does Toyota, Honda and KoreaInc use tin from Indonesia?

Why is Apple always held to a diiferent standard?

[Hydra]

7. The glories of captialism

From misery comes the miracle of excessive profit.