From Lawrence Heim, Elm Sustainability Partners

Conflict minerals information requests from customers increasingly include cobalt.  While cobalt is not an official conflict mineral, and the basis for the recent public attention is not the funding of armed groups, it is nonetheless being included in conflict minerals CMRT requests.

But cobalt is not one of the CMRT metals, and the CFSI smelter/refiner lists and audits do not include cobalt.  What do you do?  You can build on your existing conflict minerals program, but you need new data collection/verification tools, business criteria and customer reporting methodologies.

These are fundamental issues that every company will have to resolve before meaningful responses to customers can be provided, and it will likely take time.