Nintendo Ranks Last In Conflict Minerals Report 134
derekmead writes "A new report by the Enough Project, an arm of the Center for American Progress, shows that companies like Intel, Apple and Microsoft have been successfully scaling back their use of conflict minerals in their products. Other companies have been less helpful. Out of the 24 companies surveyed and ranked based on their use of conflict minerals, Nintendo came in dead last, having made no effort to ensure that its products weren't funding guerrilla warfare in Africa. 'Nintendo is, I believe, the only company that has basically refused to acknowledge the issue or demonstrate they are making any sort of effort on it,' said Sasha Lezhnev from the Enough Project. 'And this is despite a good two years of trying to get in contact with them.'"
Re:They exploit European characters also (Score:4, Interesting)
That just means they're open-minded and sensitive to other cultures and are willing to adapt to a global economy. There's no exploitation, quite the opposite, they should be applauded for using characters that go beyond their own borders.
Nintendo doesn't pay them (Score:2, Interesting)
So they get a 0 on their survey that doesn't get answer. Same thing with the greenpeace thing. Nintendo doesn't pay them, so they come in last.
Re:Good reason not to care about the report (Score:1, Interesting)
True. But to be fair, how do you investigate the source of minerals if the company won't tell you? If a company uses a lot of conflict minerals they will act just like Nintendo and keep quiet because people will point out that they simply didn't answer the survey.
Why should business care? (Score:2, Interesting)
So long as it's legal to use these minerals. Why should a business give a damm about anything else?
Leave the legal/moral/political areas to the goverments/people. If they rule it illegal. Then a business has to comply.
Or if people care enough the bad PR might hurt a company. But i really don't see that happening anytime soon.
IE conflict diamonds are forever too.
More importantly... (Score:5, Interesting)
It's wasted effort. Minerals are fungible commodities. Choosing not to buy minerals from a particular source doesn't affect anything, as they just end up being sold to someone else for the same price.
About the only thing efforts like this are good for is PR and raising prices. Programs like this don't have any tangible impact in the conflict areas.
Re:Good reason not to care about the report (Score:2, Interesting)
I particularly like how one of the bullet points explaining why they are lowest-ranked is "Lowest ranked company". It's like recursive bullshit.
The only reason I could see why most of these companies are rated badly is that they didn't want to spend the time and resources filling out surveys and auditing their supply chain for Greenpeace and their hippy brethren.