IPEN

https://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/2018/03/14/your-cool-new-samsung-...

News media across the globe have been heaping praise on Samsung's cool new Galaxy S9 and S9+ smartphones. But amid all the raves about the tech innovations and fancy features of these devices, the lives of the mostly female workers who make them have been virtually ignored.

Few consumers or reporters are aware, for example, that half of all Samsung phones are manufactured in Vietnam by a female-majority workforce in their twenties.

Our organizations explored this hidden story by conducting in-depth, open-ended, confidential interviews with 45 women who work on the assembly lines at two Samsung factories in Vietnam. What we found was shocking.

Electronics corporations converge at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona this week where they roll out latest tech innovations.

Health and environmental advocates are holding a counter event called the Mobile Social Congress to make visible the social, health, and environmental impacts in the design, raw material mining, production, use and waste of electronics. Recent research from IPEN Partners, the Research Center for Gender, Family and Environment in Development (CGFED), exposed health and labor violations of women workers at Samsung Vietnam mobile phone factories. IPEN made a presentation for Mobile Social Congress laying out the concerning findings, Samsung’s efforts to suppress the study, and why the safe and healthy working conditions in the electronics industry should concern us all.

The Czech environmental group Arnika is ringing alarm bells. According to the results of a recent study it conducted, some children’s toys and grooming accessories, such as hair brushes, sold in the EU contain toxic substances. Arnika’s Karolína Brabcová says this is an unfortunate side product of the drive to promote plastics recycling.

Listen on Czech Radio: http://www.radio.cz/en/section/panorama/the-downside-of-plastics-recycli...