M2i Global is a minerals and metals company focused on supply chain innovation, transparency, and traceability across the critical mineral systems most connected to forced labor and ecocide. Not For Sale CEO Mark Wexler serves as a Strategic Advisor to M2i, bringing nearly two decades of field experience at the intersection of mineral extraction, human trafficking, and environmental destruction.
The Problem M2i Addresses
The global demand for cobalt, lithium, nickel, copper, and rare earth minerals is accelerating — driven by the green transition, consumer electronics, and defense needs. The supply chains for these minerals are among the most documented for forced labor, child labor, and environmental destruction on earth. The DRC alone supplies over 70% of the world’s cobalt, much of it through artisanal mines where working conditions amount to modern-day slavery.
The problem is not a lack of awareness. It is a lack of infrastructure: the tools to track minerals from mine to product, the policies to enforce accountability, and the technologies to verify that the materials inside a battery or a circuit board were not extracted by forced labor or at the cost of an ecosystem.
What M2i Does
M2i is building the infrastructure that responsible mineral sourcing requires. The company focuses on supply chain transparency, tracking and tracing technology, and policy solutions that make it structurally harder for minerals linked to forced labor and ecocide to enter global markets undetected. M2i works to ensure that the transition to clean energy does not replicate the human rights failures of the fossil fuel era.
The Research Foundation
M2i’s approach is informed by the research Mark Wexler conducted as a Visiting Research Fellow at King’s College London, examining the intersection of minerals and metals supply chains with human rights and environmental consequences. This research — alongside the published paper “The Intersection of Environmental and Human Exploitation in Peru” co-authored with Dr. David Batstone — provides the evidence base for M2i’s operating model.
How M2i Connects to the NFS Mission
M2i complements Regenerate Technology Global and ABTC. While Regenerate and ABTC close the loop through battery recycling — reducing demand for new extraction — M2i addresses the front end: how minerals enter the supply chain in the first place, and whether the systems tracking them are robust enough to stop forced labor and ecocide from hiding inside the products consumers trust.
Together, these partnerships represent Not For Sale’s most comprehensive social innovation response to the minerals-trafficking nexus. Not For Sale does not just document the problem in the DRC. It builds the enterprises and partnerships that disrupt the system producing it.
