NEWS

Open Repair Alliance October 19 was the international repair day in SETEM. This year the ORA has also presented the main conclusions of its last report based on the data from community repair initiatives. Data collected from around 208,000 reported repair attempts of electronic devices has been used. Since the arrival of the first Repair Cafes in 2009, the initiatives have continued to grow: in the last year, the ORA … Read More

Last week marked the beginning of COP29, where representatives from around 200 countries gather to address the global climate crisis and the pressing need to limit temperature rises. This year’s conference, held from November 11–22 in Baku, Azerbaijan, aims to continue advancing the Paris Agreement’s 1.5°C target. However, one sector which remains surprisingly detached from its climate responsibilities is Big Tech. Despite public pledges, major technology companies, especially because of … Read More

United Nations Secretary-General convened a Panel on Critical Minerals for the Energy Transition to develop principles and recommended actions to place equity and justice at the heart of supply chains. The Panel, which included three civil society seats filled by the Natural Resource Governance Institute (NRGI), Climate Action Network (CAN) and the UN Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues (UNPFII), has just released its report. Thanks to recommendations from civil society … Read More

In response to the growing demand for critical minerals for the energy transition, Secretary-General António Guterres is leveraging the convening power of the United Nations to bring together a diverse group of governments and other stakeholders in the value chain of these minerals. Their goal is to develop a set of common, voluntary global principles to safeguard environmental and social standards and integrate justice into the energy transition. A recently … Read More

The company has justified reductions in wage compensation and the freezing of wages by a ‘crisis situation’, despite having declared that its operating profits for the second quarter would increase more than expected. Women workers at the semiconductor plant, beyond the wage increase, are demanding that the company not treat them “like machines”. Samsung Electronics’ largest union, the National Samsung Electronics Union (NSEU), has launched an indefinite strike after failed … Read More

More than half of the 103 workers at the factory, including some of the deceased, were workers on temporary contracts. On 24 June, a huge explosion set fire to a lithium battery factory in South Korea, killing 23 women workers. The fire started at 10:31 a.m. local time after a series of batteries exploded inside a warehouse containing about 35,000 units. The fire spread through the factory run by battery … Read More

When Jessica first started working in an electronics factory in the Philippines, she received no safety training and no information about the health risks involved in her new job. After over a decade of doing soldering work at the factory, she was diagnosed first with trigger finger. Then, an ovarian cyst. Before she was finally transferred to another unit doing lighter work, she had to undergo various surgical interventions and, … Read More

EU campaigning pays off with promising new repair rules, but we need many more products to be covered After years of intense campaigning by right to repair advocates, EU lawmakers have finally agreed upon new repair rules (1). The Right to Repair Europe coalition, representing more than 140 organisations in 24 European countries, celebrates that the new law will pave the way for better access to affordable repairs for selected … Read More

In our everyday lives, we are constantly surrounded by electronic devices, the presence of which is becoming more and more normalized to us. Yet, we rarely think of the materials which were used to make them. Raw materials such as cobalt and copper are required to produce electronic devices – and with more devices being produced and consumed every day, the demand for such materials, which are mined in resource-rich … Read More