Congo Mining-Enough Project
Co-creators are any player in any part of the value-adding chain contribute to creating of products and services. To avoid conflicting minerals and other such problems, responsibility must go beyond the usually supply chain certification. This week’s blog focus is about responsibility for raw materials and their source by reimagining what corporate responsibility means.
Background: A new US law is targeting smart phone manufacturers to ensure they are not funding rebels and militants, however inadvertently, when purchasing materials that may have originated in Congo particularly. The provision — tucked in the financial reform bill passed this week — requires publicly-traded and electronic companies such as Apple and Intel to submit an annual report outlining what they are doing to ensure their minerals are “conflict-free, including cobalt, gold, copper and tantalum.
Some U.S. companies buy minerals used in jewelry, computers and cell phones from the war-ravaged eastern part of the country, where government forces have been battling rebels for years. Rights groups say profits from the minerals help fund the militants.
Ignorance of conflicted minerals will be impossible when companies see themselves as responsible for the communities in which materials are developed. They will have the intention of growing the people and the economies, providing education and tools that enable such co-creators to build viable businesses and communities. When a company is this involved, they know, intimately, the people who are supplying them and would be easily able to avoid conflicted minerals and other raw materials. A good place to start would be the locations where a nation, and the communities in it, has little chance of growing its future and creating a viable destiny for its inhabitants, without a re-imagined co-creator engagement. Start where the greatest danger is likely to befall them without such care and intention.
Wednesday’s blog will offer examples with Links to business who are moving Beyond Corporate Responsibility as it is current conceived. If you want to be notified, select the RSS feed option.