We love the idea of the future.
Electric cars. Clean energy. Technology that promises to save the planet.

What we don’t love talking about is who gets sick to make that future possible.

In the Democratic Republic of the Congo—the world’s largest source of cobalt—families say toxic waste from a Chinese-owned mine is poisoning their communities. Cobalt is essential to smartphone and electric vehicle batteries. It’s in your phone. Your laptop. Your “eco-friendly” car.

And right now, it’s making people sick.

Residents near the mines report contaminated water, unexplained illnesses, miscarriages, skin rashes, and children born with serious health issues. Rivers once used for drinking and farming are polluted. Dust from mining sites settles into homes and lungs. People who never agreed to live next to industrial waste are trapped there.

This is the part of the green revolution we’re not shown.

Let’s be honest: this isn’t just a “China problem.” Cobalt doesn’t stay in Congo. It moves through global supply chains and ends up powering Western tech companies, luxury electric cars, and billion-dollar industries that proudly brand themselves as sustainable.

If your sustainability report doesn’t mention Congo, it’s incomplete at best—and dishonest at worst.

This is environmental racism on a global scale.

Despite supplying most of the world’s cobalt, Congo remains deeply impoverished. That’s not a coincidence. It’s the same old system: extract the resources, export the wealth, and leave the people with the damage. Colonialism, just updated for the lithium age.

Clean energy isn’t clean if it poisons Black communities.

Progress isn’t progress if children can’t drink the water where they live.

And “ethical innovation” means nothing when the people paying the highest price have the least power.

What’s most disturbing is how quiet everyone stays. No urgent statements. No real accountability. No major tech company rushing to say, “This is unacceptable.”

Silence is cheaper. Silence protects profits.

But silence also means complicity.

If governments cared about human rights, mining companies would be strictly regulated. If corporations cared about ethics, they’d be transparent about where their materials come from. And if consumers knew the full truth, many would demand better.

Instead, we’re sold a clean, guilt-free future—one built on someone else’s suffering.

The Congolese people are not collateral damage. They are not invisible. They are not expendable.

If saving the planet requires sacrificing African lives, then we’re not building a better future—we’re repeating the same brutal past, just with shinier technology.

And that should make all of us uncomfortable.