*36c3 preroll music*
Herald-Engel: ...three persons here to announce, there is Andreas and if I'm
right, Sebastian, and if I'm right, because I have the code names, of course,
Tamara. In their presentation, they have their real names. Something like that.
Okay, their presentation is actually about a tool and we all know that we use
electronic gadgets everywhere and but we are not aware about what actually the
human cost is of all these things. And they are developing a tool that shows us
this information. And it could probably and hopefully help us a lot in defining
what things we're going to use in our daily life. I want you to give them a
welcome applause. Please, go ahead.
*Applause*
Sebastian: Good morning. Thanks for getting up early and coming here. I'm
really grateful for that. I'm Sebastian, this is Tamara, this is Andreas. And we
are building a tool, a software tool for easy supply chain risk analysis. And I
will start by talking about the background of all this, what kind of risks we analyze
and why. Andreas will talk more about how we do the analysis and then Tamara will
talk about our Project Fairtronics. So the first thing I want to do is unpack this
slogan a little bit. Supply chain is basically all the steps that happen to a
product before it is a product, right. It starts with resource extraction and then
somehow components are being made or assembled. And at the end you have maybe a
mobile phone or an arduino or something like that. And when you're doing supply
chain, when you work with supply chains, basically, you have to acknowledge that
electronics production happens all around the globe. So that's a major thing that
makes it complicated. Risk in the sense of social risk. So what we want to do is
minimize harm that is caused to people involved in the production of electronics
devices. Analysis in the sense that we compute it. So we have a computational
model of what kind of harms, risks are in the supply chain of a product. And the
whole thing is supposed to be easy and easy is meant in the sense that you do not
need to collect extra data. If you are designing an electronic product the tool
should work only with the data you already have. As I said, supply chains are global,
making electronics products is a global affair. Basically, anything, any any
product you can think of would probably involve 45 continents such as this
smartphone here, which is a pretty typical case. It basically starts with resource
extraction at the blue green dots and resources or like, yeah, raw materials are
located all around the globe. So they come from South America, North America, Africa,
Asia and so on. And then processing and manufacturing happens in a lot of other
places. So basically the material for any product is shipped around the globe like,
like crazy. And the background of our work is essentially sustainability. You may
have heard of this model of sustainability that just made up of three pillars, the
social pillar, the environmental pillar and the economic pillar. And, you know,
many people associate sustainability mainly with the environmental aspect,
making things ecological, not emitting too much CO2 and so on. And that sometimes
leads to the social aspect of sustainability being a little bit
underrepresented. Social sustainability means avoiding harm, you know, improving
people's well-being and so on. And that is exactly the aspect that is most important
to our work. So what about the social sustainability of electronic supply
chains? Basically, you know, across all the stages of a supply chain, you can find
a whole huge catalog of human rights violations and other problems that are
associated with the making of electronics products from having to work in dangerous
conditions, for instance, being poisoned by toxic chemicals or being harmed in, you
know, when the safety precautions are not not sufficient. Being forced to work, for
instance, because people are in so much debt that they need to repay. Children
having to work, people not being able to form unions. Having to work too many hours
or not making a living wage, even though people work, you know, 10 or 12 hours or
more a day. Being displaced from one's home. For instance, when mines are being
established or extended and it frequently happens that people that have been living
there are forced to move. From being discriminated against or not enjoying
Social Security, such as, you know, being able to take time off when you are sick.
For instance, in gold mining, many of these cases are well documented, child
labor happens in very, very many places. And also you may be aware that mercury is
frequently used to extract gold, when gold is being mined. And of course, mercury is
toxic and sometimes, you know, safety precautions are not taken and people get
poisoned and the environment gets poisoned. So these are just two simple
examples to make it a bit more plastic. And the big picture is that the
digitalisation, which we enjoy and celebrate here at Congress happens on the
backs of the people who make these electronics. So how can we fix that? I
want to go through three example steps, you know, three puzzle pieces of the
solution. The first one is that there do exist some certifications that rule out
certain human rights violations. For instance, you know, the fair trade lable
from bananas or coffee or whatever. And there exists a fair trade certification
for gold. There also exists another certification, fair mind also for gold.
And, yeah, these do rule out a good part of these human rights violations. There is
another standard, Irma, which is in the process of being established, which
applies to more metals or more materials that come from mining. But the problem
with all these certifications is that they are not broadly available. So in each case
there only exist a few mines that have a certification and most of the mines don't.
So another way to put this is that there does not seem to be a huge demand for
certified metals at the moment. And I think that is like one of the things that
need to change. A second example is that when you are the designer of an electronic
product, of course you get to decide what goes into that product and you make a lot
of design decisions. And of course, these decisions determine what kind of raw
materials are needed to build your product. So this is a fun little example.
This is a DIY mobile phone. So this phone was built in a fab lab. And at the back of
the phone, you see these two little knobs sticking out. And these little knobs are
capacitors. They are aluminium capacitors because the person who built this phone
did not want to use tantalum capacitors because tantalum is well known to be
associated with the whole catalog of human rights problems. So, yeah, here you can
very clearly see this design tradeoff between making the phone a little bit
thinner or avoiding the use of certain resources. Many metals can be recycled,
not all metals do get recycled because it's not always cost effective. But of
course, when it's being done and when it's possible, recycling is a good way to
reduce the overall amount of resources that are being extracted. Why is it not
always cost effective? I think this is, again, partly a matter of supply and
demand. You know, when there is a larger demand for recycled metals, I hope you
come cost effective to recycle a larger amount of them. So the general message is
there do exist alternatives, but then the question is why, you know, why do I keep
telling you there's no demand? Why is there no demand? Why do not all people,
you know, try to source their materials responsibly? And part of the answer is
that electronic supply chains are very complex and very deep.
This is a supply chain taken from the Naga I.T. project, a very nice product,
which is also a pioneering project in fair electronics. And they tried to build
the most sustainable computer mouse possible. So they took the mouse because
it's a very simple product. And they tried to map out their entire supply chain
as far as possible. And you can see that even for the simple product, basically,
the supply chain chart is overwhelming. And you as a designer or as a maker of
an electronic product, you are basically at the top of the supply chain and you
kind of have to look backwards and see what your suppliers are and what are
their suppliers and so on. And with with this huge amount of steps, it's very
difficult to know where to start. And this is where our tool comes in.
And Andi will now tell you a bit more about how that works.
Andreas: Okay, thank you. So, we have learned now that, there exist severe
issues in the production of electronics devices, severe social issues. We want to
do something about this. But we have also seen right now that it is not an easy
task, that it is complex, that supply chains for electronics products are
complex and deep. And so the question is where can we start? And one thing that we
or that someone as a designer of electronics products does know is the
components that go into an electronics products, for example, here, the computer
mouse. You can see it's made from the casing. There's the cable. There's the
circuit board. There are resistors that go into it and so this is one thing that we
know. And so the idea for our tool is that you can feed this component list, maybe
half a bill of materials available, maybe you can just disassemble a device, feed it
into our fairtronics tool and get a hotspot analysis that tells you where is
the highest risk, where are the hotspots for social issues in your device?
So how could this be done? And I will walk with you through some steps to make
this more tangible. Like I said, one component in our computer mouse is the
resistor. And if we take the resistor, we can start collecting generic data, what
the resistor is made of. There is some copper part of the resistor, there is some
iron part of the resistor. And one example for a data source that you can see here is
from an environmental assessment of generic or average electronics components.
And what you can see here listed is the materials that an average resistor
consists of in weight. For example, copper it is made of 61.71 % of copper or 12.49 %
of iron in weight, an average resistor that we see here. OK. So now we know
something about the composition of one component and when we follow that trail
and say, okay a large part of our of our component is copper, we can ask where does
the copper come from? And here's another example of a data source that tells us
something about this. It's from the US Geological Survey and they publish yearly
estimates about the global production of different minerals. And you can see that
in 2018, Chile produced a 5.8 million tons of copper, or Congo produced 1.2 million
tons of copper in 2018. These are estimates based on publications from
different firms or governments about their copper production. Okay. So we can assume
a certain amount of the copper that flows into our component, into the resistor,
comes from Congo. And now we can ask, how are the working conditions in Congo? Are
people getting fair salary there? How long do they have to work? Is there child labor
possibly involved? Is there forced labor possibly involved in Congo? And there you
can all find quite some data on this country level that tells you something
about working conditions in different countries. And also our observation is
that the situation is improving here. But the data quality that you get since
especially since the U.N. sustainability goals were established, you can find more
and more better quality data about social conditions, working conditions in
different countries. And here's one example from the International Labor
Organization. They also publish a report on estimates about, in this case, the work
and poverty rate. So the share of people that do work, that still live below the
poverty line. And in this case we are interested in Congo and see, okay, this
rate is 70%, 70% of the people in employment still don't have enough to
live. And a huge part of our work is to collect this data, to collect data about
raw material composition of electronics components, to collect data about
production rates of these raw materials in different countries, and to collect data
about the indicators that tell us something about the working conditions in
these countries, bring them in a common format and collect them in our database.
And as soon as we have this data, we can start asking some questions and do some
basic computations. For example, we might be interested in the significance of
copper produced in Congo. Well, when we say, okay, Congo's share in world
production of copper is 5.81% and the share of copper in our resistor weight is
61.71%, we arrive at 3.58% and we could interpret this as something like medium
activity. So anything we can say, okay, around 3.58% of copper in our resistor we
can assume stems from Congo and well, it's between 1 and 10%, so quite significant,
it is medium activity, quite important for our resistor. Anything that is more than
10% would be high activity. Anything below 1% would be low activity just to
qualify this a bit. And then how severe are the impacts in Congo if we take our
example of fair salary? We have that example of working poverty rate of 70%,
which is among the top 25% of rates for all the countries that we have for this
indicator. And this is just one qualification that you can make at this
point and say, okay, anything that is, any rate that is among these top 25% of rates
is high impact. And if we do this for our whole product, for the computer mouse, we
can actually see that copper is not only the most prevalent metal in the resistor,
but for the whole computer mouse, mainly due to the cable. So well, copper is quite
prevalent in our computer mouse and we also identified a social hotspot from the
data that we just had, that is the copper extraction in Congo and the impact
category that we looked at is fair salary. And one interpretation from this analysis
would be, okay, if we find a source of fair copper, of certified copper for the
cable or find some producer of cables that is willing to work with us in improving
the situation, that would be a big step forward for the fairness of the computer
mouse. Now, there are some limitations from this approach that I would like to
point you to. For one, it's an assessment on a very generic level. So you should
take this with a grain of salt. It's just to highlight hotspots, to highlight those
areas where it's worth looking deeper and try to identify the real issues that lie
behind this. In the whole approach, we follow a methodology called Social
Lifecycle Assessment, which is similar to environmental assessments of products. So
you look at the whole supply chain or the whole lifecycle of a product and in an
environmental assessment, you are interested in the CO2 emissions or in the
water use that happens during the whole lifecycle. And in our case, we have just
different impact categories. So the impact category is not water use or CO2
emissions, but direct social impacts and that these are the ones that we are
focusing on. So anything related to workers, freedom of association, working
hours, forced labor, health and safety, Social Security, equal opportunities,
child labor and fair salary. And also, as you can see from the example, we are
focusing right now just on the raw material extraction phase and the future.
This should be extended also to cover other lifecycle phases to get to a full
assessment, social assessment. Okay, now I will pass on to Tamara, who will tell you
more about our project and the tool that we are developing.
Tamara: So thank you. Now that Sebastian already told you why we are working on
this project and Andi you told you how we are doing this, I like to show you a bit
of what we've done already. So we're building a web based analysis tool to
identify social hotspots. You can see a screenshot of the current work in progress
of it. It should be, an MVP should be done by the end of February. And to revisit
that example for the computer mouse, here you can see that the component that you
should look at first is the data cable, and then that if you find a sustainably
sourced or fair copper for your product, that would be a significant improvement.
And now you maybe all wonder if that is really great and how can I contribute to
it? So first of all, to all the makers of electronic products. It would be great if
you let us know what kind of tools you currently use, in what formats you export.
You could just send us your bill of material list or PCB layout so we can
offer templates because we want it to be really easy to use. And the other thing is
just use our tool by the end of February. Give us feedback. Tell us what
functionalities are working for you, whether or not. And another thing is we're
an open source project, we'd love to collaborate. So if you have time on your
hands and you're motivated and or passionate for the subject, just join us.
And you can find us on gitlab, here's the link. A very crucial matter is the
procurement of data. Without data we cannot conduct an analysis and our current
database is rather tiny and a lot of manual labor went into it. And even though
there have been significant improvements concerning open source data for social
indicators it's still not in a standardised format to feed them into a
coherent system quickly. And another thing is the raw materials that constitute
components, there it's even harder to find something. So if you're in possession of
data, if you're probably a manufacturer and you have lists or if you just love to
extract data in an automated way, yeah, let us know. And the last thing is talk
about it. So even if you're not a maker yourself. Yeah, like spread the word, talk
with people about it. And the more people know and think about it, hopefully, the
more can be done and if it's at a bare minimum more conscience towards this
topic. And to wrap up this talk, I'd like to reiterate what Sebastian said in the
beginning. Currently in the production of electronic products, human rights are
violated at almost every step of the supply chain and this must not be the
case. And this does not have to be the case, as he said earlier. There are
alternatives. You can use certified raw materials, you can use, materials from
certified mines. You can actively take working conditions into consideration in
the design process and you can use recycled material if possible. But most
importantly, you can increase the demand for sustainably sourced raw materials and
a fair production of electronic products. And here's also our contact information.
So feel free to write us an email or you're here, we're here, you can come and
talk to us. And I'd also like to thank the prototype fund at this point because they
have been funding us so far. And that was a great help. Yes. Thank you. And thank
you for your attention, your interest and your time.
*Applause*
Herald-Engel: Super! Thank you! Wow! You can be really proud about your product,
really. I wonder if there are questions here among our audience who is really
clearly woken up and fresh. And to the point, ah here at number two. Yes, please!
Mic2: Is it on? Okay. Collecting data is a difficult task, as you just said. So I
wanted to ask if you share it with other databases like Wikidata or another open
data source, or if you like only keep it to yourself because it's too hard to
actually connect to other data sources? Andreas: Well, technically, we're working
on,... to have a REST interface for the data that we collect and we happily
share it. For some we are not sure if we are allowed to share them. So if there is
some expert here concerned property rights of databases, that would be great to talk
about them. But we happily share the data that we can. And if you want to connect
here, great! Mic2: Okay. Thank you.
Herald-Engel: Here, Number one. Mic1: Thanks a lot for the presentation
and I'll probably send you some bill of materials, too. I've got one question. I
know that Fairlötet offers the Stannol soldering tin. But do you also plan to
offer a solder paste? Because for all SMD assembly obviously it's not possible to
use that Fairlötet product. Sebastian: Yeah, okay, so for context,
basically that was our inaugural project at Fairlötet. We are an association that
works on fair electronics. And yeah, basically the first project we did was we
got together with Stannol, which is a maker of soda products, and designed a
soda wire. So what you would use when you have your soda...iron and...So I would
suggest that you get in contact with Stannol directly. Actually, we are not so
much involved in distributing this order anymore.
Herald-Engel: Number one, can you repeat the question, please?
Mic1: So there is no product on the market at the moment what you can recommend for
soldering paste? Sebastian: Stannol do have their own
product line they call Fairtin. So that is tin with a traceable origin, following
best practices in mining. So that might be an option for you.
Herald-Engel. Okay, we have a question at number two.
Mic2: Thank you, you hear me? Thank you very much for your talk. I was wondering,
have you gotten in contact with purchasing organizations, because in supply chains
nowadays you often have a service provider that is in between the producer who buys
these products and the vendors. And often these purchasing service providers are
asked to help control the supply chain. Sebastian: We haven't actually and to be
honest, I think we need to start at the point where there's some kind of momentum
and for us I think it's easier to reach people like you. You know, maybe hardware
developers or maybe small enterprises or maybe just activists because, I mean, I
cannot really make really broad statements, but I think big parts of the
whole industry are kind of conservative when it comes to stuff like
sustainability. And we kind of have to work our way through there, I think.
Herald-Engel: Okay, we have a question. Number three there. One second. Yes,
please. Number three. Mic3: First of all, thank you for your
talk, and my question is, you used a relative approach regarding the evaluation
of the impact category. And I was wondering if there was a specific reason
for that or if, I mean, you could have instead just evaluated the absolute value
by which you compare the different countries of origin.
Andreas: You mean to have some kind of reference point and say, okay, it's better
or worse and than this reference point. The approach that I showed you right now
is our starting point where we are following some well, an approach that or
modeling after approach that we found in literature. And that seems doable for us
right now within the six month timeframe that we have to arrive at a full
prototype. But it's not fixed. So certainly the whole methodology can still
be improved. So, yeah, that's pretty much what I can say to that.
Mic3: Thank you. Herald-Engel: Fine. Thank you. Yes, sir,
please. Mic: Hello. My question also concerns the
relative impact approach that analyzes, for example with the mouse which
countries and which materials from these countries had an impact. And I was also
wondering if except for the country of origin and its world market share and also
the share of weight in the product, as you showed with copper, if you're also taking
into consideration other factors, for example, the rarity and different impacts
of materials, for example, copper being more common than tantalum, as you
mentioned, and if you would consider adding that as an additional factor into
your analysis. Andreas: Right now, we do not consider it.
But one could certainly think about it. Maybe we can talk about later about this
idea, would be great. Herald-Engel: It's fine. Do we have
questions online? No one. We're all asleep. I see someone here at number two.
Please Sir. Mic2: Hi there. I'm also a prototype fund
recipient. It's really, really cool to see them doing all this nice and this awesome
stuff. I am a happy fair phone owner. And I also have another non fair phone and the
fairphone was twice the price of the other one. And whenever I ask people or they ask
me, which one should I get? I say like, well do you wanna spend twice, that's
where you have to get yourself into. In the fact that, in the face that we have
this failure market wise, do you see any role for regulation to actually make it
easier for people who build things like this to do the right thing? Because when
you speak to small businesses, the thing that I always have pushed back at me is
that we cannot make them viable at these prices. So we're forced to use over the
non fair parts in our electronics. Sebastian: So concerning regulations,
yesterday I gave a lightning talk on the Lieferkettengesetz, right now there's a
broad NGO campaign going on that is trying to establish mandatory human rights due
diligence in Germany. But also there are initiatives in other countries such as
Switzerland. France already has a supply chain law and so on. And there are also
some processes on the EU and U.N. levels. So, I think that is,... I mean, but that
is basically the bare minimum, right? I mean, not violating human rights should
actually not be something great. It should be, you know, it should be something
everyone does. Yeah. Herald-Engel: That's absolutely the point
actually, in our lifestyle, western world hooked up to electronics and yeah, we
can't live without it. But I had a question as well, if you...Ah there is
another one. I have a question. But number three, please, you can.
Mic: I have a question about the lack of data. You said you need more data and you
asked for data sheets of parts. But I think you also need more data about metals
or working conditions. Do you have the top three data what you would appreciate based
on the metals or on the working conditions in countries, for example? Probably we can
provide you with that. Andreas: Oh, it would be hard to tell
something about the top three. It's just, well, right now we are at a state where we
think, okay, on a very generic level, we can cover most of the minerals that are
relevant. We can cover most of the countries. But most of the indicators, for
the indicators, there is still a lot of gaps. Well, maybe you can find an
indicator for child labor but it covers only 20 countries and not all of the
countries. So on this level, on a very generic level, we are quite complete. But
then a good next step, for example, would be to get data that is more specific to
industries and not only on a country level. So that would be great. In general,
it's just well, we need more of everything.
Tamara: And also components and what raw materials they constitute.
Andreas: So yeah, as Tamara just said, the component composition is the more severe
lack that we have right now. Tamara: So the more generic it is, the
less accurate it is. Herald-Engel: May I? I have a question as
well. We still have a few minutes left. Did you mention how you're financed or
backed or... did you do that? Tamara: I think I did. I'm not sure of
it but there's also the logo. Herald-Engel: And this brings you til
which stage, meaning til the product is there or is there something in the future
waiting? Tamara: Til the end of February this
round, round it is called, is finished. So we want to have a minimal viable product
type at that point. But I think all of us would be happy to see more of that in the
future. Sebastian: Right, so basically the period
where we're being funded by prototype fund is almost over, it's until February. But
Fairlötet will try to keep the project going as best as possible. So we're also
trying to build a small developer community around it. And let's see what
happens then. Herald-Engel: Yeah. And so spread the
words, I would say, so that you have more data as well in your database before the
end of February. So I would ask everyone to give a warm applause and remember, give
them the data and they can bring it further. Thank you. Thank you guys for the
talk. Fantastic. Fairtronics.org, check it out!
*Applause*
*36c3 postroll music*
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