Where does our technology come from?
Wix Media
Have you ever thought about what the electronics you use are made of and where these parts come from?
TECH is everywhere. and from everywhere.
Much of our daily and professional lives revolve around the use of electronic technology, whether it is mobile phones, computers, electric vehicles, toasters, or even fancy microscopes. However, many of us tend to overlook the sophistication of each product, as many headphones and air fryer companies only assemble and/or sell them and do not create parts by themselves. Instead, these electronics comprise various parts from all over the world, so it's important to understand the components of each one, amount of effort and unethical policies used to source them, and the level refinement required to utilize them. Let’s take a deep dive into some!
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"HP or Dell computers basically don't have anything HP or Dell inside them."
- Eric Williams
Assistant professor of civil engineering at Arizona State University
Some Basic parts...
Let's look at some commonly-used parts in most household electronics.
Microchips
Microchips, also known as semiconductor chips or microprocessors, are what breathe life into any sort of hardware. CPUs and GPUs are two main microchips found in most devices, including phones, gaming devices, and even medical equipment. Both are silicon-based but use other elements as well: boron and arsenic are often used to dope (increase conductivity) of CPUs, and tantalum and palladium capacitors (a component that stores energy) and transistors (a component that acts as an amplifier and switch) are often used in GPUs.
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Batteries
Batteries, specifically the lithium-ion kind, were revolutionary for electronic devices as they are rechargeable and easier to recycle, compared to their lithium counterparts. The demand for these batteries has been growing in the past two decades with the introduction of electric vehicles and mobile devices. This has led to the increasingly pressing need to secure the critical raw minerals (CRMs) required to produce them, which consist of lithium, carbon graphite, cobalt, nickel, and manganese.
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Circuit Boards
Circuit boards, typically called printed circuit boards (PCBs), are in motherboards and send electric signals to other components of the device to connect them all. They are flat units made up of horizontal layers of copper, epoxy resin, and fiberglass with tin, gold, silver, and zinc as transistors.
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...and their Rocky Origins
Many of the raw materials mentioned above have complicated histories and supply chains.
Lithium
Lithium is a highly-sought-after metal for lithium-ion batteries, which famously power EVs and many other electronics. Most lithium mining is done in the salt flats of the “lithium triangle” of Argentina, Bolivia, Chile as well as hard rock mines in Australia and China. It is deceptively environmentally friendly, as it enables renewable energy (rechargeable batteries) but isn’t renewable itself. Producing 1 ton of lithium requires a whopping 2.2 million liters of water, diverting water away from local communities, and many indigenous peoples of Argentina and Tibetans in China were not informed that their land and resources would be used for drilling. Additionally, mining processes have historically caused air pollution because of carbon emissions, water pollution due to improper disposal of minerals, and habitat loss and soil degradation to violent excavation blasts and general environmental disturbance.
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Cobalt
Cobalt is another high-demand element used in lithium-ion batteries, microchips, and hard drives. The world’s largest producer of cobalt is the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), making up 80% of its export revenue along with copper. However, its mines are destinations of repeated human rights violations; Congolese adults and children are forced to work in inhumane conditions—without proper tools or equipment, safety regulations, sanitation, medical care, or pay—while facing threats of sexual assault from corrupt leadership and death from cobalt air pollution-related health problems and mine collapses. While these exploitative labor practices of cobalt mines in the DRC were no secret, they have recently been gaining more traction on social media. More and more young people are learning of the lives altered or lost in the process of making their favorite gadgets, with many quitting vaping to reduce demand and e-waste.
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Quick view of The 3 T's
The conditions of the workers that mine these 3 minerals are extremely poor, with fatal mining accidents being commonplace and no safety regulations in place to prevent them. The mines also have disastrous consequences on the environment, destroying natural habitats, killing off entire fish stocks, and polluting the air and soil.
Let's Visualize it!
Click around the tags on the map to view some of the world's largest supplies of various raw materials.
Media from Geology.com, Interactive via Thinglink
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