Leonardo DiCaprio's 2006 movie "Blood Diamond" shed light on the sometimes dubious origins of luxury goods.
The movie highlighted increasing concern about human rights violations in the supply chain and the diamond industry has been put under pressure to eliminate minerals of unknown or dubious sources.
Now, attention is shifting to metals and other commodities that are mined using child or slave labor, or in dangerous conditions.
Cobalt is an insignificant-looking grey metal that risk consultancy Verisk Maplecroft says may be the next so-called conflict mineral. It is used to make the rechargeable batteries found in cell phones, laptops, electric vehicles, aircraft and power tools. The metal is predominately mined in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), where critics say children as young as seven-years-old labor in horrendous conditions.
"The glamorous shop displays and marketing of state-of -the art technologies are a stark contrast to the children carrying bags of rocks and miners in narrow manmade tunnels risking permanent lung damage," Mark Dummett, a researcher at human rights charity Amnesty International, said in a report on cobalt mining in the DRC in January.
The term "conflict mineral" carries a lot of legal ramifications. U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission rules mean public companies must track the source of commodities designated conflict minerals in their supply chains in an effort to combat the financing of militia in countries like the commodities-rich DRC.
At present there are only four legally designated conflict minerals — tantalum, tin, gold (Exchange: XAU=), and tungsten — of which the first three are commonly mined in the DRC. Some analysts and human rights bodies say cobalt should be added to the list of minerals for which companies have to conduct heightened supply chain scrutiny.
These calls increased after Amnesty International's report, which alleged that a subsidiary of Chinese mineral giant Zhejiang Huayou Cobalt (Shanghai Stock Exchange: 3799-SZ) bought cobalt from mines in the DRC where child labor was rife. Amnesty said Huayou Cobalt sold the processed metal onto battery component manufacturers in China and South Korea, who claimed to supply 16 multinational consumer brands, including Apple (NASDAQ: AAPL).
Complex supply chains spanning several continents present challenges for companies who are required to n determine where every commodity and component in their products come from. In response to Amnesty's report, Apple said it was evaluating if the cobalt in its products came from the DRC and if so, whether it was via Huayou Cobalt.