Fairtronics
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Fritsch, Andreas
Sebastian (xian)
Tamara (tamdrx)
Electronic gadgets come not just with an ecological footprint, but also a human cost of bad working conditions and human rights violations. To support hardware makers who want to design fairer devices, we are building a software tool to easily discover social risk hotspots and identify measures for improvement. The issue of human rights violations in the supply chains of electronics products is nowadays being broadly discussed. However, from the point of view of a hardware maker, it is difficult to exclude the possibiltiy of harm being done to workers in their supply chains due to their complexity and lack of transparency. At the same time, projects such as Fairphone and NagerIT demonstrate that improvements are, in fact, possible. At FairLötet and the Fairtronics project, we try to support those who would like to improve the social impact of their products in taking the first step towards improvement. To this end, we are building a software tool which will provide a first estimate of the risks contained within a given design: circuit diagram in, analysis out. The analysis shows the main social risks associated with the product, due to which components and materials they arise, and in what regions of the world the risks are located. This enables the user to understand where efforts towards sustainability should be concentrated, e.g. by making informed purchasing decisions or engaging with suppliers. In this talk, you will learn about the risks associated with electronics, how they are estimated, and what data we gather to compute them. No deep background in sustainability or hardware is required.
 The three persons here to announce it 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 or something like that. Okay their presentation is actually about a tool and we all know that we use electronic gadgets everywhere and but we're 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. Good morning thanks for getting up early and coming here really grateful for that. I'm Sebastian this is Tamara this is Andreas and we are building 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 tomorrow we'll talk about our project Phaetronics. So the first thing I want to do is unpack this the slogan a little bit. So a play 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 what you work with supply chains basically you have to acknowledge that electronics production happens all around the globe so that's a major like thing that makes it complicated. Risk in the sense of social risk so what we want to do is minimize harm that is 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 will probably involve four to five 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 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 crazy. The background of our work is essentially sustainability. You may have heard of this model of sustainability that is made up of three pillars the social pillar, the environmental pillar and the economic pillar and 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 when there are the safety precautions are 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 then it frequently happens that the people that have been living there are forced to move. 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 labour happens in 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 digitalization 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 label from bananas or a coffee or whatever and there exists a fair trade certification for gold. There also exists another certification for mined also for gold and yeah these do rule out a good part of these human rights violations. There's another standard, ERMA, which is in the process of being established which applies to more metals or yeah 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 this 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 products. So this is a fun little example. This is a DIY mobile phone. So this phone was built in a FabLab and at the back of the phone you see these two little knobs sticking out and these little knobs are capacitors. They are aluminum 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 catalogue of human rights problems. So yeah here you can very clearly see this design trade 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 isn't it not always cost effective? I think this is again partly a matter of supply and demand. When there's a larger demand for recycled metals, I would be cost effective to recycle a larger amount of them. So the general message is there do exist alternatives but then the question is why do I keep telling you there's no demand? Why are waste there no demand? Why do not all people 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 IT project. A very nice project 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 fast as possible. And you can see that even for the simple product, 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 this huge amount of steps, it's very difficult to know where to start. And this is where a tool comes in and Andy will tell you a bit more about how that works. Okay, thank you. So yeah, we have learned now that there exist severe issues in in the production of electronics devices, severe social issues. We want to do something about this. And 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 yeah, the question is where can we start and one thing that we or that someone as a designer of an electronics products does know is the components that go into an electronics products for a product. 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 you have 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 are, where's 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's some copper flowing part of the resistor, there's 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 there is here what you can see here listed is the materials that an average resistor consists of in weight. For example, copper it's made of 61.71% of copper or 12.49% of iron in weight, an average resistor that we see here. Okay, 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 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 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, okay, a certain amount of the copper that flows into our component, into the resistor, comes from Congo. And now we can ask, okay, how are the working conditions in Congo? Are people getting fair salary there? How long do they have to work? Is their child labor possibly involved? Is their 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 about the data quality that you get, especially since the UN 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 working 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%. So 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, you know, start asking some questions and do some basic computations. For example, we might be interested in the significance of copper produced in Congo. And 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's 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 a qualification that we 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, certified copper for the cable, or find some producer of cable 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 behind this. In a whole approach, we follow a methodology called social life cycle assessment, which is similar to environmental assessments of products. So you look at the whole supply chain of the whole life cycle 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 life cycle. 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 these are the ones that we are focusing on. So anything related to workers, freedom of association, working hours, forced labour, health and safety, social security, equal opportunities, child labour and fair salary. And also, as you can see from the example, we are focusing right now just on the raw material extraction phase. In the future, this should be extended also to cover other life cycle phases, to get to a full assessment, social assessment. Okay, and now I will pass on to Tamara, who will tell you more about our project and the tool that we are developing. So thank you. Now that Sebastian already told you why we are working on this project and you told you how we are doing this, I would like to show you a bit of what we have done already. So we are building a web-based analysis tool to identify social hotspots. You can see a screenshot of the current working 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 may be wondering that is really great and how can I contribute 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 and what formats you export. You could just send us your bill of material lists or PCB layouts so we can offer templates because we want it to be really easy to use. So another thing is just use our tool by the end of February, give us feedback, tell us what functionalities are working for you, what are not. And yeah. And another thing is we are an open source project. We would love to collaborate. So if you have time when you're hence and you're motivated and passionate for the subject, just join us. And you can find us on goodlip. 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 standardized format to feed them into a coherent system quickly. And another thing is the raw materials that constitute components. There's even harder to find something. So if you're into 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 the bare minimum, more conscious 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 have 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 worker 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. Super. Thank you. Wow. You can be really proud about your product. I wonder if there are questions here among our audience who's really clearly woken up and fresh. And to the point, I hear, number two, yes, please. Is it on? Ah, no. 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. Well, technically, we're working on 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's some expert here concerned with 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. Okay. Thank you. Here at number one. Thanks a lot for the presentation, and I'll probably send you some bill of materials soon. I mean, I've got one question. I know that Fair Looted offers the Stannol soldering tin, but do you also plan to offer sold up paste because for all SMD assembly, obviously, it's not possible to use that Fair Looted product? Yeah. Okay. So for context, basically, that was our inaugural project at Fair Looted. We're 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 solder products, and designed a solder wire. So what you would use when you have your solder iron. So I would suggest that you look at, you get in contact with Stannol directly. Actually, we are not so much involved in distributing the solder anymore. Number one. Just by, can you repeat the question, please, because the mic was... Okay. So there is no product on the market at the moment, which you can recommend for soldering paste. Stannol, you have their own product line, they call Fair Tin. So that is Tin with a traceable origin, following best practices and mining. So that might be an option for you. Okay. We have question number two. Thank you. You hear me? Thank you very much for your talk. I was wondering if you've, have you gotten in contact with so purchasing organizations? Because in supply chains nowadays, you often have a service provider that is in between the producer who buys his products and the, and the vendors. And often these purchasing service providers are asked to help control the supply chain. We haven't actually, and to be honest, I think we need to start at the point where there is 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 like stuff like sustainability. And we kind of have to work our way through there, I think. Okay. We have question number three there. One second. Yes, please. Number three. 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, margin. You mean to have some kind of reference point and say, okay, it's better or worse than the server reference point. The approach that I showed you right now is our starting point where we are following some well, an approach that modeling after approach that we found in literature. And that seems doable for us right now within this 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. Thank you. Fine. Thank you. Yes, sir, please. 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, as 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. Okay. Right now, we do not consider it. But one could certainly think about it. Maybe we can talk about later about this idea. It would be great. Yeah. That's fine. Do we have questions online? No one? We're all asleep. I see someone here at number two. Please, sir. Yeah, hi there. I'm also a prototype fund recipient. It's really, really cool to see them doing all this nice awesome stuff. I am a happy fare phone owner. And I also have another non fare phone. And the fare phone was twice the price of the other one. And whenever I ask people, they ask me which one should I get, I say, like, well, do you want to spend twice? That's what you have to get yourself into. In the fact that in the face that we have this failure market wise, do you see a new 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 people push back at me is that we cannot make this viable at these prices. So we're forced to use all the non fare parts in our electronics. So concerning regulation, yesterday I gave a lightning talk on the Lieferketten Gazette. 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 supply chain law and so on. And there are also some processes on the EU and UN levels. So I think that is, I mean, that, 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, yeah, should be something everyone does. Yeah, okay. 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 for you. Aren't there isn't another one? I have a question. But number three, please, you can. Hello, 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. It would be hard to to tell something about the top three. It's just well, we 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 are still a lot of gaps. Well, that you 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, yeah, 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. And also components and what raw materials we constitute. So yeah, as Tamar just said, well, the component composition is maybe more the more severe lack that we have right now. So it's more generic, it is less accurate. May I have a question as well? We still have a few minutes left, but did you mention how you financed or backed or did you do that? I think I did. I'm not sure if it but there's also the logo. And this brings you to deal with which stage meaning the product is there or is there something in the future waiting? Until the end of February, this round round is finished. So we want to have a minimal viable prototype at that point. But I think all of us would be happy to see more of that in the future. So basically the period where we're being funded by prototype fund is almost over, until February. But the failure will try to keep the project going as best as possible. So we're also trying to build a small developer community around it. Yeah, and let's see what happens then. Yeah, and so spread the word, I would say, so that you have more data as well in your database before the end of February. So we'd 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 interview. Fantastic. Thanks for joining us. Go for it. Check it out.
 The three persons here to announce it 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 or something like that. Okay their presentation is actually about a tool and we all know that  we use electronic gadgets everywhere and but we're 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. Good morning thanks for  getting up early and coming here really grateful for that. I'm Sebastian this is Tamara this is  Andreas and we are building 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 tomorrow we'll talk about our project Phaetronics.  So the first thing I want to do is unpack this the slogan a little bit. So a play 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 what  you work with supply chains basically you have to acknowledge that electronics production happens  all around the globe so that's a major like thing that makes it complicated. Risk in the sense of  social risk so what we want to do is minimize harm that is 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 will probably involve four to five  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 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 crazy. The background of our work is essentially sustainability.  You may have heard of this model of sustainability that is made up of three pillars the social  pillar, the environmental pillar and the economic pillar and 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 when there are the safety precautions are 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  then it frequently happens that the people that have been living there are forced to move.  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 labour happens in 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 digitalization 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  label from bananas or a coffee or whatever and there exists a fair trade certification for gold.  There also exists another certification for mined also for gold and yeah these do rule out a good  part of these human rights violations. There's another standard, ERMA, which is in the process of  being established which applies to more metals or yeah 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 this 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 products. So this is a fun little example.  This is a DIY mobile phone. So this phone was built in a FabLab and at the back of the phone you  see these two little knobs sticking out and these little knobs are capacitors. They are  aluminum 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 catalogue of human  rights problems. So yeah here you can very clearly see this design trade 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 isn't it not always cost effective? I think this is again partly a matter  of supply and demand. When there's a larger demand for recycled metals, I would be cost effective to  recycle a larger amount of them. So the general message is there do exist alternatives but then  the question is why do I keep telling you there's no demand? Why are waste there no demand? Why do  not all people 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 IT project. A very nice project 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  fast as possible. And you can see that even for the simple product, 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 this huge amount of steps, it's very difficult to  know where to start. And this is where a tool comes in and Andy will tell you a bit more about  how that works. Okay, thank you. So yeah, we have learned now that there exist severe issues in  in the production of electronics devices, severe social issues. We want to do something about  this. And 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 yeah, the question is where can we  start and one thing that we or that someone as a designer of an electronics products does know is  the components that go into an electronics products for a product. 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 you have 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 are, where's 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's some copper flowing part of the resistor, there's 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 there is here what you can see here listed is  the materials that an average resistor consists of in weight. For example, copper it's made of  61.71% of copper or 12.49% of iron in weight, an average resistor that we see here. Okay,  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 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 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, okay, a certain  amount of the copper that flows into our component, into the resistor, comes from Congo. And now we  can ask, okay, how are the working conditions in Congo? Are people getting fair salary there? How  long do they have to work? Is their child labor possibly involved? Is their 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 about the data quality that you get, especially since the UN  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  working 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%. So 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,  you know, start asking some questions and do some basic computations. For example, we might be  interested in the significance of copper produced in Congo. And 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's 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 a  qualification that we 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,  certified copper for the cable, or find some producer of cable 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 behind this. In a whole approach, we follow a methodology  called social life cycle assessment, which is similar to environmental assessments of products.  So you look at the whole supply chain of the whole life cycle 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  life cycle. 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 these are the ones  that we are focusing on. So anything related to workers, freedom of association, working hours,  forced labour, health and safety, social security, equal opportunities, child labour and fair salary.  And also, as you can see from the example, we are focusing right now just on the raw material  extraction phase. In the future, this should be extended also to cover other life cycle phases,  to get to a full assessment, social assessment. Okay, and now I will pass on to Tamara, who will  tell you more about our project and the tool that we are developing. So thank you. Now that  Sebastian already told you why we are working on this project and you told you how we are doing  this, I would like to show you a bit of what we have done already. So we are building a web-based  analysis tool to identify social hotspots. You can see a screenshot of the current working  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 may be wondering that is really great  and how can I contribute 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 and what formats you export. You  could just send us your bill of material lists or PCB layouts so we can offer templates because we  want it to be really easy to use. So another thing is just use our tool by the end of February,  give us feedback, tell us what functionalities are working for you, what are not. And yeah. And  another thing is we are an open source project. We would love to collaborate. So if you have time  when you're hence and you're motivated and passionate for the subject, just join us. And you  can find us on goodlip. 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 standardized format to feed them into a  coherent system quickly. And another thing is the raw materials that constitute components. There's  even harder to find something. So if you're into 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 the bare minimum, more conscious 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 have 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 worker 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. Super. Thank you. Wow. You can be really  proud about your product. I wonder if there are questions here among our audience who's really  clearly woken up and fresh. And to the point, I hear, number two, yes, please. Is it on?  Ah, no. 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. Well, technically, we're working on 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's  some expert here concerned with 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. Okay.  Thank you. Here at number one. Thanks a lot for the presentation, and I'll probably send you  some bill of materials soon. I mean, I've got one question. I know that Fair Looted offers the  Stannol soldering tin, but do you also plan to offer sold up paste because for all SMD assembly,  obviously, it's not possible to use that Fair Looted product? Yeah. Okay. So for context,  basically, that was our inaugural project at Fair Looted. We're 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 solder products, and designed a solder wire. So what you would use when you  have your solder iron. So I would suggest that you look at, you get in contact with Stannol  directly. Actually, we are not so much involved in distributing the solder anymore.  Number one. Just by, can you repeat the question, please, because the mic was... Okay. So there is  no product on the market at the moment, which you can recommend for soldering paste. Stannol,  you have their own product line, they call Fair Tin. So that is Tin with a traceable origin,  following best practices and mining. So that might be an option for you. Okay. We have question  number two. Thank you. You hear me? Thank you very much for your talk. I was wondering if you've,  have you gotten in contact with so purchasing organizations? Because in supply chains nowadays,  you often have a service provider that is in between the producer who buys his products and  the, and the vendors. And often these purchasing service providers are asked to help control the  supply chain. We haven't actually, and to be honest, I think we need to start at the point  where there is 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 like stuff like sustainability. And we kind of have to work  our way through there, I think. Okay. We have question number three there. One second. Yes,  please. Number three. 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, margin. You mean to have some kind of reference  point and say, okay, it's better or worse than the server reference point. The approach that  I showed you right now is our starting point where we are following some well, an approach that  modeling after approach that we found in literature. And that seems doable for us right now within  this 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.  Thank you. Fine. Thank you. Yes, sir, please. 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, as 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. Okay. Right now, we do not consider it. But one could certainly think about  it. Maybe we can talk about later about this idea. It would be great. Yeah. That's fine. Do we have  questions online? No one? We're all asleep. I see someone here at number two. Please, sir. Yeah,  hi there. I'm also a prototype fund recipient. It's really, really cool to see them doing all  this nice awesome stuff. I am a happy fare phone owner. And I also have another non fare phone.  And the fare phone was twice the price of the other one. And whenever I ask people,  they ask me which one should I get, I say, like, well, do you want to spend twice? That's what  you have to get yourself into. In the fact that in the face that we have this failure  market wise, do you see a new 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 people push back at me is that we cannot make this viable at these prices. So we're  forced to use all the non fare parts in our electronics. So concerning regulation, yesterday  I gave a lightning talk on the Lieferketten Gazette. 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 supply chain law and so on.  And there are also some processes on the EU and UN levels. So I think that is, I mean,  that, 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, yeah, should be something everyone does.  Yeah, okay. 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 for you. Aren't  there isn't another one? I have a question. But number three, please, you can. Hello,  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. It would be hard to  to tell something about the top three. It's just well, we 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 are still a  lot of gaps. Well, that you 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, yeah, 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. And also components and what raw materials we constitute.  So yeah, as Tamar just said, well, the component composition is maybe more the more  severe lack that we have right now. So it's more generic, it is less accurate. May I have a question  as well? We still have a few minutes left, but did you mention how you financed or backed or did  you do that? I think I did. I'm not sure if it but there's also the logo. And this brings you  to deal with which stage meaning the product is there or is there something in the future waiting?  Until the end of February, this round round is finished. So we want to have a minimal viable  prototype at that point. But I think all of us would be happy to see more of that in the future.  So basically the period where we're being funded by prototype fund is almost over,  until February. But the failure will try to keep the project going as best as possible.  So we're also trying to build a small developer community around it. Yeah, and let's see what  happens then. Yeah, and so spread the word, I would say, so that you have more data as well in  your database before the end of February. So we'd 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  interview. Fantastic. Thanks for joining us. Go for it. Check it out.
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