MADRID, 2 Sep. (Portaltic/EP) -
China's Institute of Public and Environmental Affairs and four NGOs accuse Apple's suppliers in China of polluting the environment and compromising the health of their workers. The four NGOs that participated in the report, entitled 'The other side of Apple II', are 'Friends of Nature', 'Green Beagle', 'Envirofriends' and 'Green Stone Environmental Action Network'. Apple has defended itself.
This report speaks of "supposed suppliers" that pollute lakes and waterways with heavy metals such as copper and nickel and of fumes that affect the health of workers, irritating their skin and eyes. In addition, the report also states, among other cases, that a Foxconn factory in taiyuan city emits corrosive gases. These gases significantly affect the citizens living in Taiyun and on several occasions they had assured that they could not open the windows of their homes for this reason.
The NGO assures that for the realization of the report they visited many of the factories located in several regions of China and assured that it is very common for the factories "not to properly manage hazardous waste" and that 27 of them incur in environmental pollution.
Apple has no factories of its own and its products are produced in China and then distributed around the world. This report is the second part of 'The other side of Apple', the report published last January by the administration and the NGOs themselves. This report included cases of contamination and misuse of hazardous chemicals in Apple supplier companies.
After the publication of the report, Apple went so far as to issue its own annual Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) report in which they acknowledged, for the first time, that 137 workers had been poisoned by n-hexane while working on a production line for one of its products.
The report said Apple has a poor environmental record and that the company had been less sensitive to investigations than other electronic device makers.
Related links:
- Report 'The other side of Apple II' (http://www.ipe.org.cn/Upload/Report-IT-V-Apple-II.pdf).
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