As patrons of Blue Patch, the UK’s largest sustainable business directory, we have been working with Blue Patch members since 2022 advising on their sustainability. In order for Blue Patch members to feature at shows such as London Design Fair, Decorex, and sustainable design events, transparency and accuracy regarding environmental credentials is key.
The Making Business Greener Campaign funded by the Naturesave Trust is working with Linda Bloomfield Ceramics on research into human rights within the supply chain and carbon footprinting.
Linda Bloomfield is a potter, designer, author and teacher, and an expert of ceramic glazes and professional potter of more than 20 years.
As Linda teachers glazes. and through her writing, as well as running course in the UK on colour and glaze development, the ethical provenance of her glaze materials is of utmost importance. Knowing where materials come from is not just important ethically, it can also be useful for determining your studio carbon footprint.
Although there are clay deposits used by potters across Africa, most of the globally important mining in Africa related to ceramics is of metallic oxides used in colorants. These include cobalt, copper, chrome, iron bearing minerals, manganese, nickel, tin, and zinc. Most of the extracted metals are destined for other industrial uses with ceramics as a whole, and studio pottery in particular, using a very small percentage.
We conducted research on the supply chain of Linda Bloomfield’s glazes. Glazes that have a hue, use mined minerals such as Cobalt to create their colour – however some minerals have been linked to human rights abuses and modern day slavery, if they are mined in unregulated mines.
The first part of research was to examine the website of her primary suppliers to see if the suppliers had Environmental and Social Governance (ESG), carbon reporting, sustainability or Modern Day Slavery policies. The Modern Slavery Act (2015) mandates that Organizations with an annual turnover of over £36 million must produce a slavery and human trafficking statement for each fiscal year.
Materials suppliers ranged from the UK to Ireland and on inspection they did not have policies. None of the Client’s suppliers have a statement available on their website – nor do they overtly mention socially sustainable extraction in their website’s mission section, however in the Health and Safety sections of some websites they list their supplier. The suppliers are most likely to be under the turnover of over £36 million, to legally be required to have this form of reporting.
One supplier did have safety sheets and the others were part of a large supply chain supplied by large multinationals based in the USA. The second stage of this research work will be to contact the large suppliers to find where the materials are extracted and by whom – it is likely that these suppliers will have a turnover of over £36 million.
The reason that this research is important is that Linda Bloomfield has sustainability and ethics at the core of the business, so having control and knowledge of the provenance of her materials is key.
Let’s take the ethical issues on the mining of cobalt as an example.
The Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) is home to an estimated 60% of the world’s cobalt reserves, which is primarily used to produce chemicals, super alloys and carbides.
The industry, however, faces huge issues regarding sustainability – there are an estimated 2 million artisanal miners (including an estimated 40,000 children) – which is defined as subsistence miners who may not be officially employed – who work in unsafe conditions at a wage of around $2-3 per day. These artisanal mines produce around 15-30% of the country’s cobalt. In addition to this, a study concluded that in the eastern DRC there are 2,951 mines employing 427,469 artisanal miners.
Whilst artisanal mining is banned, local authorities have limited power to enforce laws against child labour, sexual assault and debt bondage. In addition to this, many multinational corporations (MNCs), such a Glencore and the state-owned Gécamines, may fail to regulate their mines.
We will be doing follow up work to investigate more thoroughly the supply chain of the ceramics industry, to see if we can create more consideration on provenance and mine regulation. It will also assure Linda Bloomfield that her supplies are sourced from mines that are properly regulated and do not have any human rights violations.
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