At least we know now. Thanks to the campaign by Friends of the Earth, Samsung has at last discovered the source of the tin it uses to make its products – including smartphones. Despite years of campaigns about the human and environmental impacts of the metals used to make electronic goods, several of the biggest manufacturers have remained in a state of convenient ignorance about the sources of their raw materials.

Now, under intense public pressure, Samsung has traced some of the tin it uses to Bangka Island in Indonesia, whose mines are notorious for their great toll of human lives and ecosystems, and in particular for the fact that children work there in terrible conditions.

Obtaining information like this is often extremely hard, and it's a credit to Friends of the Earth's Make It Better campaign that we have acquired this fragment. Last month, when I tried to buy a smartphone that was not soaked in blood, I found myself stumbling around, blindfolded by the lack of information. As Nokia, which seems to have done more than any other such firm to investigate its own supply chain, told me, "there has been no credible system in the electronics industry that allows a company to determine the source of their material".

It seems amazing to me that our dependence on sophisticated electronics has progressed so far while these questions about their humanitarian impacts have progressed so little. Don't we want to know? Don't we even want the companies who manufacture them to know on our behalf? Do we, in Joseph Conrad's words in Heart of Darkness, still wish to be "going at it blind"?

Here's the context:

They grabbed what they could get for the sake of what was to be got. It was just robbery with violence, aggravated murder on a great scale, and men going at it blind – as is very proper for those who tackle a darkness. The conquest of the earth, which mostly means the taking it away from those who have a different complexion or slightly flatter noses than ourselves, is not a pretty thing when you look into it too much.

How much has changed since then?

After pursuing the issue of sourcing metals from the Democratic Republic of Congo, and trying your patience when I discussed the frustrating results, I decided not to buy a smartphone, unless FairPhone succeeds in manufacturing one. And perhaps not even then. Confronting this issue prompted me to ask another question altogether: do I really want one anyway, and might I not be happier without it? What about you?