Tesla joins Fair Cobalt Alliance as push to eradicate abuses on DRC mines gathers pace

cobalt

TESLA has joined the fledgling Fair Cobalt Alliance (FCA) which is gathering members in order to stamp out child labour from mining sites and improve working conditions in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), said Bloomberg News.

The FCA was last month backed by miner and trader Glencore. Chinese cobalt refiner Zhejiang Huayou Cobalt Company, China’s largest cobalt refiner, which supplies carmakers including Volvo Cars and Volkswagen, is also part of the organisation.

The DRC supplies 60% of the world’s cobalt, a key raw material in batteries, but more than 10% comes from informal miners digging by hand, including children. Last year, Apple, Google, Microsoft, Dell and Tesla were sued by a human rights group on behalf of families of children killed or injured while mining cobalt in the DRC.

Groups such as the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development have said that child labor and human rights abuses are common at such sites and production from the country’s artisanal mines often gets mixed in with industrial output.