Blood in the Mobile is a documentary made by Frank Piasecki Poulsen in 2010 that tries to get to the bottom of if his phone company, Nokia are part of the blood mineral trade.  The film is definitely an eye opener and really makes the viewer think about where the materials make up our possessions come from.

The film definitely highlights the need for designers to take responsibility for their designs, including the full supply chain.  Its clearly not that simple however and I think this film really shows how hard it can be to get large corporations to take action to improve their ethics and take responsibility for the damage that they are inadvertently causing.

Coming away from the film, I obviously had a lot of feelings of guilt and disgust that the situation in the DR of Congo  had got so bad. I almost wanted to get rid of my phone completely. On the other hand however it becomes much more complicated when you consider how many lives phones and other technology have saved and weighing up these two sides is it better to have the technology or not. Overall the film raised a lot of unanswered questions for me; What exactly were the minerals used for in the technology and do we still use them today? Has the situation in the Congo changed at all? Are new technologies causing similar problems to those we had in the past?

Casserite and bauxite are the minerals from which tin and aluminium are derived respectively and are used in circuit boards. As far as I can tell from online research, these metals are still heavily used in our current technologies. It seems that around the year 2010, when the film came out, there was a lot of awareness and campaigning against these conflict minerals but there has been very little news in recent years.  Congo is still a very corrupt country with suspicions of rigging in the recent Presidential election in December 2018.  I was surprised to find however that a much more legitimate mine is currently being built in Bisie, where much of the film was set.

Mine developer Alphamin is currently constructing ‘the worlds most significant tin mine’ in Bisie in the north of the Congo.  A 38km road has been built to create transportation infrastructure to the mine which was previously only reachable on foot.  Since construction in only just beginning it is hard to tell what the impact of the mine has been so far and what it will be like there when it is fully up and running. I hope that this mining company coming in will employ locals who were previously working in the mines in order for them to get safe employment.  A worry however is that this mine will undercut the work that the local miners do and lead to further problems in the area.

Overall, it is clear that this film raises a huge moral dilemma in the responsibility that designers have for the things that they create, it also shows the impact that politics and geography have on global supply chains.  I think, as designers we can only attempt to minimise the use of these conflict minerals or ensure that they are sourced from a mine where workers are safe and get a fair wage. This is of course easier said than done and when working for a large corporation, design choices like this are difficult to make.