For the past couple of years there has been a mass migration of people occurring all around the world. These individuals leave loved ones behind and often set up camp outside the nearest Apple store where they hope to purchase the latest offering from the House of Steve Jobs which mostly begins with “i”.
The new iPhone 5 was recently launched after weeks of hype and once again Apple was in the news but it was just last year that the tech giant got some really bad press thanks to its suppliers in China. The Institute of Public and Environmental Affairs in Beijing along with several other non-profit environmental agencies released a 46 page report titled “The other side of Apple” which detailed how Apple’s suppliers are guilty for causing environmental degradation due to poor handling and disposal of their toxic waste products. The report also sheds light on an explosion that occurred in an ipad production plant that injured 15 workers and sadly killed three.
An Apple store. The tech giant is often reluctant to name its suppliers (Photo by Redjar)
However I am not going to join the Apple bashing crowd in this article because my sister who happens to be an Apple fan will probably disown me and more importantly I feel China should also take its share of the blame. Now it will be easy say that Apple took advantage of China by not applying the same rigorous checks on its supply chain that it definitely would have done in America for instance but there is a popular saying in Nigeria that no one can abuse your house unless you start it yourself and this sadly applies to China.
China has grown to be one of the world’s largest economy but has paid the same price that its forerunners did during the industrial revolution. This period saw rapid advancements in manufacturing but this bought along high levels of pollution whose legacy we are still feeling today. While our grandfathers and great grandfathers can claim ignorance about the effects of their actions, fate will not be too kind on nations that refuse to learn from their mistakes and this applies to all developing nations.
A factory in China which has sadly has lax environmental laws (Photo by High Contrast)
We should always remember that corporations are always looking to increase their profits and the environment is likely to take second place to economics. Sadly many companies will greenwash their actions in a bid to placate their customers with a recent example once again being Apple which withdrew its products from the EPEAT environmental ratings system and then rejoin it days later. Apple’s management called its initial action to withdraw a mistake but only made a U-turn after a backlash from potential customers. In light of this host countries should not sit and hope that foreign companies will “do the right thing” but instead they should ensure their environmental laws are strictly adhered to. Many companies will operate an unofficial “Don’t ask, Don’t tell” policy with their suppliers and as long as their activities don’t make the 9.00pm news or go over budget, they will be happy.
Environmental agencies should be properly staffed and more importantly they should be free of corruption. The latter is often a problem in developing nations due to their low per capita incomes but they should be made aware of the consequences of environmental degradation. Nigeria is a case in point of how years of oil spills by Shell and corruption by its government gave birth to the Niger Delta militants famous for kidnapping foreign oil workers and ironically blowing up pipelines which cause even more pollution. The environmental agencies should be proactive and take the fight to offending corporations as opposed to for waiting for NGOs to dig up dirt on shady environmental practices.
