Thread by @enn_nafnlaus

It's recently been in the news that "International Rights Activists", a law firm run by Terry Collingsworth, has sued Google, Microsoft, Apple, Dell, and Tesla over child labour in the Congo.

theguardian.com/global-develop…

One could point out that his target selection seems to be...

... nothing more than "pick the five most famous Tech companies", or that his law firm has a history of hiding payments to witnessess and has been accused with using a human rights suit as cover to boost a Dutch oil company's business in Colombia:

forbes.com/sites/danielfi…

miamiherald.com/news/local/art…

... but that would be unfair, because regardless of the attorney, child labour in Africa is a *very real* problem. One in every five African children work - 9% of African children in dangerous jobs:

ilo.org/ipec/Regionsan…

If you buy something - directly or indirectly - from Africa, odds are pretty good that child labour in specific, or human rights abuse in general, was involved at some stage of its production. Palm oil in your food. Platinum in your catalytic converter. Even the copper in your...

... walls - the very mine in question here is primarily a copper mine, with cobalt as a value-added byproduct.

But let's examine the case more closely. The allegations are as follows:

* IRA is representing families of children who claim they were injured or killed working at..

the Kamoto mine.
* Kamoto is owned and run by Katanga
* Katanga is a subsidiary 75% owned by Glencore, a UK company that is generally seen as the source of "legit, respectable" cobalt in the Congo. Glencore also owns the huge Mutanda mine that had to shut down this year due...

to the cobalt glut
* Glencore sells to Umicore, in Brussels, which makes cathode materials.
* Umicore has many partners around the world. The lawsuit targets "Apple, Google, Tesla, Microsoft, and Dell"

Let's start with what's undeniable: if something improper happened at...

... Kamoto, it traces all the way back to Umicore. There's no ambiguity there. It gets fuzzy from there, however. Tesla is well known for *not* buying Congo cobalt. The Model S/X get cobalt from the Philippines, while Model 3 gets it from Canada. Amnesty international, in its...

... very first report on the problem of child labour in cobalt mining, spared Tesla from criticism specifically for this reason:

business-humanrights.org/en/amnesty-int…

I've searched and searched attempting to find any evidence that Tesla purchases from Umicore, and come up dry. There is,...

... mind you, a connection, but it works in the opposite direction: Umicore is a Tesla recycling partner. They get cobalt *from* Tesla's used battery packs.

medium.com/tradr/teslas-a…

There is an indirect way in which some Tesla products could get "contaminated" by a Umicore...

... supply. A huge buyer from Umicore is LG Chem - who just signed massive deal for next year:

newmobility.news/2019/09/25/umi…

LG Chem supplies batteries to almost every major western manufacturer's EVs *except* Tesla. However, next year they're expected to start supplying cells...

for Gigafactory 3 in Shanghai, until Tesla can ramp up its own capacity.

Another way in which Umicore cobalt could enter Tesla's supply chain is via its energy division. At times, Tesla Energy has been so starved of cells that it's been forced to purchase from (undisclosed)...

third parties. It's quite possible that such cells could involve Umicore cobalt.

Lastly, it's also certainly possible that there are Tesla purchase deals with Umicore that I am just unable to find evidence of. By all means, if you find any, please reference them in the comments.

On the other end of the equation is the question of the Kamoto mine itself - and here's where things start to fall apart. As a reminder, here's what artisanal mining looks like:

In contrast, here is what Kamoto looks like:

Kamoto is a modern industrial copper mine (w/cobalt byproduct), mined by modern equipment and processes. In particular, here's the KOV Pit. Does this look like something that was mined by hand?

However, Katanga has had problems with *illegal* artisanal mining on their properties. In particular, the above KOV pit made the news this summer when artisanal miners undercut a terrace, causing it to collapse and kill 41 of them.

mining.com/web/at-least-3…

Illegal mining on their property has gotten bad enough that they've had to turn to the Congolese military to keep the miners out.

bloomberg.com/news/articles/…

Do I believe that Kamoto (and thus, Katanga, and thus, Glencore) hired child workers? Honestly, I'm highly dubious. What good, exactly, would a child hauling rocks by hand do in a modern industrial mine? They'd only get in the way.

On the other hand, I strongly *do* believe...

that there likely was child labour involved in the illegal mining on Kamoto's property. And would not be surprised in the least if the children represented in this lawsuit were employed at one of the illegal mines in question.

Regardless, I think there's one good thing to come..

of all of this. People were perfectly content to ignore child labour and human rights abuse in Africa when it was making food for their kitchens, metals for their cars, the copper wire for their walls, tantalum for their computers, etc etc. Finally we've found something to...

make people actually *care*. Unfortunately, I think people will take entirely the wrong message - that funding needs to go to NGOs working to eradicate the child poverty that leads to this across the continent - and will think that if they avoid "batteries" they're making the...

world a safe place for children. While meanwhile they keep burning oil which - unlike cobalt, which is mined only once, then recycled indefinitely - is burned up in smoke.

Oil production in the Niger delta alone - home to 30 million people - has doubled the child mortality rate.

theguardian.com/global-develop…

Nothing on the planet has a more profound negative social impact than oil production. Yet many people will continue to burn it without any sort of remorse.

And to top it off, cobalt's already tiny share of Africa's total child labour is on the decline as cobalt prices have crashed.

reuters.com/article/us-cob…

Artisanal mining's boom was fueled by the spike as large providers took time to ramp. Now there's a glut on the market.

This even after Glencore shuttered the huge Mutanda mine.

reuters.com/article/glenco…

Why the glut? A bit reason is that manufacturers just aren't using as much cobalt. While a typical cell phone or laptop battery (LCO) may be 30% cobalt by mass, a typical NCA/NMC cell may be...

5-10% cobalt by mass. Tesla's are less than 3% by mass - an order of magnitude less than a typical LCO battery - and are en route to 0%.

cleantechnica.com/2018/06/17/tes…

Cobalt plays a stabilizing role in battery cells, but this role is increasingly being taken up by alumium and...

manganese. Indeed, current research suggests that cobalt's role in high-nickel chemistries like NCA/NMC is no longer required.

jes.ecsdl.org/content/166/4/…

Nickel being another metal that nobody seemed to care about when it was used in stainless steel.. but in batteries, hell no! ;)

Ironically, the future source of nickel sulphate for batteries is looking likely to be HPAL. While traditional nickel sulphide deposits are rare, the limonitic laterite deposits suitable for HPAL are abundant in tropical regions the world over.

What's interesting about this is that limonitic nickel laterites tend to also be quite rich in cobalt. For example, Tsingshan's pilot plant in Indonesia will be producing cobalt sulphate at a 10:1 ratio with nickel sulphate:

reuters.com/article/indone…

It should be pointed out that Tesla already uses a greater than 10:1 ratio of nickel sulphate to cobalt sulphate, and thus already has no need for any additional cobalt resources from such supplies.

ED: For clarity, that's 1 tonne of cobalt sulphate per 10 tonnes of nickel sulphate.