July 1999, Mineral Policy Center
Is sustainability possible in the mining sector? After all, this is an industry whose core business is the depletion of raw natural resources. This is also an industry that consumes vast amounts of energy and produces massive quantities of waste. Of all the earth and ore disturbed for metals extraction, only a miniscule amount is actual ore. For example, the 7,235 tons of gold ore mined in 1995 account for only 0.01% of the 72.5 million tons of materials moved and processed to extract that ore. The rest, 99.99%, was waste. The 11,026 tons of copper mined account for only 1% of the 1 million tons of materials moved. The rest, 99.00%, was waste.
There are fundamental questions that need to be asked and answered about the need for gold products, especially considering the environmental impact of some types of mining operations. Demand for jewelry accounts for 85% of annual gold fabrication demand. It can take 5 to 6 tons of ore to make one gold wedding band, leaving 10,000 to 12,000 pounds of waste. How do we weigh the benefits of jewelry to consumers against the potential environmental and landscape impacts of new large-scale gold mines? How many new openpit gold mines can be justified when there are such vast oversupplies of gold stocks held by governments? In cases when gold mining can lead to permanent water degradation, do the economic benefits of gold production today outweigh the environmental and economic benefits of clean water tomorrow?
It is well documented that most governments subsidize resource extraction over re-use, recycling, and other more sustainable forms of economic development. In the U.S., a law dating back 127 years, to 1872, actually encourages wasteful mine operations on public lands. In the developing world, the World Bank and other publicly funded financial institutions underwrite and promote resource extraction as a form of development. It is particularly interesting to note that these policies continue to be pursued during a period of oversupply and historically low metals prices. This raises an obvious and potentially significant question. Are governments subsidizing forms of economic development that are not only non-sustainable from an environmental and social perspective, but also dead-end economically?
Too often, mining companies want to discuss sustainability only in terms of how to mine, not whether to mine. For any sustainability policy to be complete it must address the issues of where and when it is appropriate or not to mine.
While there are both theoretical and practical challenges to achieving sustainability in a sector that produces non-renewable resources and vast quantities of waste, Placer Dome’s sustainability initiative is, nonetheless, an important endeavor. If successful, it will lead to real on-the-ground environmental and social benefits.
Mining is now seen as one of the greatest threat to the world’s frontier forests. Mining can have significant and long-term impacts on valuable water resources. It can also lead to forms of pollution that persist long into the future, such as acid lakes and streams. In a 1987 study, the EPA rated problems related to mining waste as second only to global warming and stratospheric ozone depletion in terms of ecological risk. The report concludes: "with high certainty" the release to the environment of mining waste "can result in profound, generally irreversible destruction of ecosystems." Some of the most difficult cleanup problems on the U.S. Superfund list of toxic waste sites are mines. In some cases these sites may never be fully restored. Like radioactivity, some forms of mine pollution, such as acid leaching from exposed mine waste and abandoned mines, can lead to pollution so persistent that there is no available remedy. For example, the Iron Mountain mine site in northern California is expected to leach acid for at least 3,000 years before the pollution source is exhausted.
