Cobalt mining in the DRC: the dirty little secret behind electric cars

All the American yuppies pride themselves that they will soon be forced to drive electric cars, which are "non polluting".

Well, ignore those local electric plants, of course.

But as AlJ points out: To make the batteries, you need cobalt, and Cobalt mining is destroying the local environment in the DRC.

 Cobalt is one of the key ingredients added in electric batteries, and more than half of it is currently mined in the Democratic Republic of Congo. Amnesty says children as young as seven work in dangerous conditions in Congo cobalt mines.

"At the present time, you'd have to say that there isn't a lot of regulation around the mining of cobalt," says Gavin Wendt, the founding director and senior resource analyst at Australia-based Minelife. "A lot of the cobalt that's mined is generated from illegally operated mines that employ almost slave labour: underaged workers, illiterate workers, workers that don't get paid very much ... They're controlled by warlords, and the industry is appallingly run."