For years, companies have sent old flourescent tubes for recycling. Generally, this involves recovery of the end caps, glass and mercury vapor. Elm recently observed an emerging technology at a client location that goes a step further by recovering additional high-value materials from other – less obvious – components of these tubes and CFLs. The details remain confidential at this point (we even obtained specific authorization from the client to post this). But once fullly operational, this process will greatly expand the universe of materials recovered from fluorescent tube/CFL recycling. And with the use of fluorescents continuing to grow, this is good news. Feel free to contact us if you have questions. We will refer inquiries directly to our client who will then respond as appropriate.
Read more →The House Committee on Financial Services, Chaired by Congressman Spencer Bachus has announced a series of hearings on various aspects of the Dodd-Frank Act, including Section 1502 on conflict minerals. The public notice is available on the Committee website and includes: May 10 at 10 a.m. The International Monetary Policy and Trade Subcommittee will hold a hearing on the consequences of requiring Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) registrants to provide disclosures about the use of minerals from the Congo region.
Read more →Based on our ongoing dialogs with clients and other companies, and our attendance at last week’s EICC-GeSI Conflict Minerals Workshop in Philadelphia, we have a few predictions about the upcoming second report on OECD’s downstream pilot program on the implementation of their due diligence guidance. The report was originally scheduled for release last month, but is not yet available and we don’t know when it will be published (although we would expect in advance of the next meeting the first week of May). As our client base consists more of heavy industry, hard metals and non-electronics consumer products, some of our predictions stand in contrast to “conventional wisdom.” Especially for US companies subject to DF1502, there is an increasing recognition that the makeup of the downstream pilot participants is heavily skewed toward the electronics industry, and the results of the pilot are therefore not representative of heavy manufacturing or other non-electronics sectors. At the same time, we expect an increased awareness of conflict minerals (CM) issues in pilot participants which means a related increase in uptake of basic program elements such as company policies on conflict minerals. Many companies (arguably most companies (a) outside the electronics industry and (b) not
Read more →The highly-touted Solutions for Hope (SfH) Project in the DRC has received global publicity as a potential model for future conflict-free mineral sourcing within the DRC. As part of the project, an independent audit of the operations was conducted to evaluate conformance of the operation to the OECD Due Diligence Guidance. This work was conducted by Gregory Mthembu-Salter, a consultant to the United Nations Group of Experts. This audit document, which forms the basis of SfH’s conflict-free mine claims, is available on the SfH website. (NOTE: When we began writing this piece, the link to this audit report functioned properly. At the time of our publication, the link appears to have become corrupted, therefore we include the document in its exact form as originally downloaded from the SfH website on April 5, 2012. SfH OECD audit report) With the world carefully watching the SfH project, one expects the highest attention to detail and scrutiny at each step in the process. However, with all due respect to Mr. Mthembu-Salter (whom Elm will be meeting at the end of this month at the ITRI Conflict Minerals Programme in Cape Town South Africa), it is unlikely that an SEC Conflict Minerals Report (CMR)
Read more →The World Gold Council (WGC) has released the exposure draft, dated March 2012, of its Conflict-Free Gold Standard. According to the press release, The objective of the Standard is to create absolute trust that the gold produced under its guidelines neither fuels armed conflict, nor funds armed groups, nor contributes to human rights abuses associated with these conflicts. The WGC press release, which contains a link to the draft, is available here.
Read more →Do you have questions about conflict minerals programs or cultural/business contexts of conflict minerals in Central Africa? In just over a month, Elm’s Lawrence Heim will be presenting at ITRI’s Conflict Minerals Programme in Cape Town South Africa as part of ITRI’s International Tin Conference 2012. He is joining a panel of world renowned experts from Central African countries including DRC, the United Nations (UN), US Agency for International Development (USAID) and more. These recognized experts, covering a range of topics relevant to cultural and business implications of conflict minerals in Africa, include (alphabetically): Patrick Amisi, Minister of Mines, Maniema, DRC Banny Banza, Vice President Stakeholders Committee Katanga, Head of SAESSCAM Katanga Bali Barume – BGR Yves Bawa – Pact Cyprien Birhingingwa, South Kivu civil society Assheton Carter, Senior Vice President, Pact Joseph Ikoli – DRC Eric Kajemba, OGP (civil society) (to be confirmed) John Kanyoni, FEC & Association des Comptoirs, North Kivu and DRC Bob Leet – EICC/Intel Gilbert Leya – Katanga Paul Mabolia, ICGLR Committee on Illegal Exploitation of Natural Resources, DRC Joseph Mbaya – Rwanda Kay Nimmo – ITRI Henry Nkeng – MONUSCO – Centre de Negoce Dr Emmanuel Nkurunziza, President of Stakeholders Committee Rwanda, Director General
Read more →With little fanfare, OECD published its Final Draft Supplement on Gold v. 3.0. Based on – but significantly longer than – the Supplement on Tin, Tantalum and Tungsten, the gold supplement offers far more details concerning the reality of program development and implementation. We take this as a positive sign that OECD is indeed paying attention to the input from the pilot program participants and is willing modify their documents/approach.
Read more →In today’s news, Bloomberg reported that SEC Chair Mary Shapiro public stated the the final conflict minerals regulation should not be anticipated before mid year.
Read more →Ever since US Senator Patrick Leahy’s February 16 letter to SEC referenced “the outlines of the final rule”, speculation spiked that the final conflict minerals rule had been drafted, made available to key Washington leaders and therefore finalization reasonably evident. We ourselves wrote about this. Since that time, we launched a multi-faceted effort to locate and obtain this document. Today we received some surprising news from a US Senate office staffer who contacted SEC as a result of one of our requests: The SEC directly denies that any form of a final conflict minerals regulation is complete, and no version of a final regulation has been officially submitted to any elected officials. Did Senator Leahy simply use poorly chosen wording in his letter, or is there more to it? Certainly we don’t know and won’t speculate. However, it now appears that the wait and political obfuscation will continue.
Read more →In a letter filed February 16, 2012 (the same date as a letter filed by a group lead by Senator Patrick Leahy), another group of five high ranking US Senators pushed SEC to finalize the conflict minerals rules, saying “it has been over a year and a half since Section 1502 was signed into law and its full and meaningful implementation is long overdue”. Substantive comments made in the short letter include: “Congress did not intend for Section 1502 to provide companies with an option to report that the origin of materials cannot be identified. If a company cannot affirm that the minerals are “conflict-free”, the only other conclusion that could be reported would be that the product may contain materials the directly or indirectly finance armed groups in the DRC.” “… we strongly urge you to issue strong regulations with no phase-ins or delays…” The letter is co-signed by Senators Barbara Boxer, Frank Lautenberg, Barbara Mikulski, Sheldon Whitehouse and Ron Wyden.
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