Page 62 - Carbon Capitalism and Communication Confronting Climate Crisis

46 R. MAXWELL AND T. MILLER

costs of operations. Some areas that could be addressed include procure-
ment practices, energy consumption, occupational health, and e-waste.

PROCUREMENT PRACTICES AND THE SUPPLY CHAIN
Green organizations are well positioned to identify and analyze how their
ICT usage is tied into an interconnected supply chain that’s spread far and
wide across the globe. For example, environmental NGOs, like Good
Electronics, have taken the lead in analyzing labour conditions around the
world in the ICT sector, reminding us that digital technologies are not
post-industrial products despite their appearance of being so clean you
could eat off of them. 8
It would therefore be an important act of consciousness raising were
environmental groups to publicize the industrial origins of the ICTs they
use. It would help to counter the ideological enchantment with digital
technologies—even environmentalists are vulnerable to the fetishism of
commodities—that overtakes our perception of ICTs when labour and
harsh working conditions are forgotten. So, environmental organizations
should be willing to recast their virtuous image with an honest, if dis-
agreeable, accounting of the pernicious effects of the digital technologies
they procure. To put the matter of their own procurement practices in the
context of the international division of ICT labour would help these
organizations and their adherents to identify points of alliance with labour
activists and researchers mapping global supply chains, especially in the
farthest reaches, and to collectively address problems encountered.
While it requires effort to learn about global and systemic connections
between ICTs, supply chains and environmental groups and green citizens,
it takes even greater commitment to incorporate that knowledge into
reflexive thought and social habits. ICTs are born from a toxic and unsus-
tainable process that begins in mines around the world—the major mining
regions are in Africa and Latin America, points of origin for the copper,
gold, tin, coltan, lithium and other elements that go into smartphones,
tablets and computers. Components assembly and finish work reach around
the globe too, but again most of the contract manufacturers that make
brand name products are found in Asia and Mexico. Spreading information
related to these international realities is one aspect of environmental action;
transforming that information into cognitive and behavioural routines is
another, though more difficult, process (Maxwell and Miller 2016a).