“Apple has said it has ‘lead a fact-finding visit’ to Bangka Island, Indonesia to identify if its suppliers are sourcing tin from unregulated and illegal mines,” Matt Brian reports for The Verge.
“In an update to its Supplier Responsibility page on its website, Apple confirmed it has funded a new environmental task group to investigate mining operations in the area to ‘better understand the situation,'” Brian reports. “The move addresses a sustained Friends of the Earth campaign calling for Apple to publicly come clean about where the tin in its smartphones comes from.”
Brian reports, “While Apple says it is working to ‘better understand the situation’ in Indonesia, Samsung has already admitted to using tin sourced from Bangka Island. ‘While we do not have a direct relationship with tin suppliers from Bangka Island, we do know that some of the tin that we use for manufacturing our products does originate from this area,’ Samsung said in a statement to Friends of the Earth.”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Note: Apple’s statement, verbatim:
Bangka Island, Indonesia, is one of the world’s principal tin-producing regions. Recent concerns about the illegal mining of tin from this region prompted Apple to lead a fact-finding visit to learn more. Using the information we’ve gathered, Apple initiated an EICC working group focused on this issue, and we are helping to fund a new study on mining in the region so we can better understand the situation.
Apple’s Supplier Responsibility webpages are here.