By the Numbers: Life and Death at Foxconn - ProPublica
The surprising number from this list was,
40: Estimated percent of the world’s consumer electronics manufactured by Foxconn.
I first learned about Foxconn because it makes many Apple products, and that’s how Foxconn is frequently covered in the news, as a company that assembles products for Apple and other technology companies. Except, while maybe Apple is their biggest customer, Apple isn’t bigger than all of the other customers put together.
This bothers me because coverage of awful conditions at Foxconn probably inspires some people to switch from Apple products to products from other companies, but this probably doesn’t do any good, because Foxconn makes products for lots of companies, and even if one figures out how to avoid buying products made by Foxconn, one will have difficulty finding, say, computers and phones that are made in much better conditions.
If it’s important to you to buy things made ethically, choosing to buy a laptop from one company versus another is probably not going to make a difference unless you’ve done research on their suppliers. I think it’s better to contact your favorite company and tell them that treating workers ethically matters to you, and to do research on how they’re doing. Apple has a Supplier Responsibility page, which I guess I should go look at now.
