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cell phones
November 2009 
How Many Cell Phones is a Gorilla Worth?
John
In the November, 2001 National Geographic Magazine I read the following words:
How many cell phones is a gorilla worth? In the Democratic Republic of the Congo, eastern lowland gorillas are being killed for food by miners searching for coltan, a mineral in demand for making capacitors used in high-tech electronics. Each gorilla lost diminishes the country's potential to attract ecotourists.
The Democratic Republic of Congo is home to 80% of the world's coltan reserves.
Here's what Helen Vesperini reported for the BBC a few months earlier:
In the yard of the Shenimed sorting house, young men are busy sorting and cleaning colombo-tantalite ore, or coltan, as it is known in this part of the world.
Regional analysts say the international demand for coltan is one of the driving forces behind the war in the DRC, and the presence of rival militias in the country.
First the young men toss it up into the air as if they were winnowing rice.
Then they sort it with magnetic tweezers to eliminate any particles of iron ore.
It is then washed, crushed manually in a big pestle and mortar and tested again for iron ore before being fed into a photospectrometer to test its tantalum content.
The men concentrate calmly on their work or joke among themselves.
Blood tantalum
It is a far cry from the drama of the "No blood on my cell phone" campaign that a group of NGOs and religious communities have launched in Europe to lobby for an embargo on so called "blood tantalum", the colombo-tantalite ore that comes from the war zones in the east of the Democratic Republic of Congo.
Tantalum is essential in the manufacture of electrical components known as pinhead capacitors.
These regulate voltage and store energy in mobile phones, tens of millions of which have been sold in the past few years.
The European lobby groups, like the regional analysts, say that coltan production is fuelling the war in Congo.
I was so touched by this story, with its shades of ‘Blood Diamonds' that I wrote a song questioning our relentless need for more and better high-tech goods like cell phones. Once again, it is worth being aware of the implications of every purchase we make. By the way, I still don't own a cell phone and I don't feel I'm missing a thing.
The song is called Lookin' and if you click here you'll get to a page where there's a link to it.
Access: Public
DRC need’s to find a new way to boost the economy. Even if it were ethical to murder the gorilla’s for the minerals used in cellphones, they have to realize that there are very little gorrillas and that the amount of minerals that are extracted from each gorilla are minute and the source of gorillas are not replenishible once extinct just like oil will be. So it’s just best to find alternative places for the mineral or perhaps alternative ways of making the cell phones. The economy doesn’t need cell phones if they can barely afford electricity if they have any and clean running water. They need to come up with other more beneficial industries that can really take off. Tourism will probably make them earn more than the cell phone production and they’re killing tourism by killing the creatures. So sad.
the same kind of situation just seems to keep happening, again and again.
Gain and loss.
Stephanie,
Thanks for your compassionate comments. Just a quick note of clarification. The gorillas don’t contain the minerals being mined. They are simply being used as food for the miners, who find the coltan in the ground.
Dean,
I agree. But my point remains consistent. We can play a part by each looking at the number of things we buy. There are ramifications to everything that is produced. We remain distant from the source of the the things we buy while we are enmeshed in the Global Economy.
Yes I agree, there is a chance, you know what they say, ” you can’t stop an idea whose time has come” So It is possible, that drawing attention to the gorilla/cellphone issue could catch on worldwide. But I also know that people love their cellphones, and I also doubt many people would boycott them to save gorillas, but it is possible. The most important part is that we care. and keep caring about issues like this.
I don’t know much about tantalum, but I will look into it, I think it is pretty rare and does not occur in many places on this planet.
If you like I will write a blog about this topic and try to raise some awareness about it.
Hi again Dean,
Thanks again for your thoughtful, caring input. Why not write a blog about it? This is one thing we can do. Every good thought, every good deed, has real, tangible impact on the greater good. A website recently found one of my blogs to publish. It’s a place dedicated to voluntary simplicity, ala people like Helen and Scott Nearing. Their web address is: http://www.simpleliving.net/.
Do what you can Dean. We don’t do this writing for results, but it does make a difference.
John