Since the first mobile phone was developed in 1973, mobile phones have come a long way — from a chunky brick with buttons and an antenna to the sleek, slim and smart devices that fit in your pocket. Developers experimented with a wide range of minerals to improve the mobile phone. They found that tungsten allows your phone to vibrate, cobalt and rare earth elements give your phone its crisp sound, silicon helps to store your precious photos and indium is to thank for your touch screen. Throw some gold, silver, copper and more than 35 other elements in there, and you have the modern mobile phone. 

The ever improving and growing mobile phone market demands an increasing amount of minerals. On the one side, that demand has led to economic growth in many mining countries. On the other, it has had a negative impact on the environment and on communities living in mining areas. 

Large-scale mines, which are regulated by the state, extract vast quantities of minerals. Unfortunately, due to weak governance in many countries, such as the Democratic Republic of the Congo, the environmental and social impacts of these mines are not sufficiently regulated. Environmental impacts, such as sulfur dioxide pollution, acid rain and acid mine drainage have been troublesome. Due to the decreasing quality of ore, large mines need increasingly large areas of land, competing with the land-use needs of local communities. 

Additionally, many of the minerals are mined by illegal artisanal and small-scale miners, who are not regulated by the state. These miners have been associated with child labour, forced labour, dangerous working conditions, sexual violence,  financing armed forces, using harmful chemicals, such as mercury and deforestation. These illegally mined minerals find their way into global supply chains, eventually ending up in our mobile phones.