Toxic and radioactive: The damage from mining rare elements
Low wages, water shortage and acidified landscapes: Mining critical raw materials endangers human rights and the environment. Yet the industry is expanding.
The mining of critical raw materials leaves hostile rubble dumps in its wake.
More than every second person in the world now has a cellphone, and manufacturers are rolling out bigger, better, slicker models all the time. Many, however, have a bloody history.
Though made in large part of plastic, glass, ceramics, gold and copper, they also contain critical resources. The gallium used for LEDs and the camera flash, the tantalum in capacitors and indium that powers the display were all pulled from the ground — at a price for nature and people.