July 2000, Stephen D’Esposito / The Corporate Ethics Monitor
Many question whether mining can be described as “sustainable.” After all, this is an industry whose core business depends on 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, in 1995 the gold industry moved and processed 72.5 million tons of rock to extract 7,235 tons of gold. The rest, 99%, was left as 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 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 open-pit 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?
The most difficult and contentious issue is likely to be where it is or is not acceptable to mine. For example, in some instances, an operation with state-of the-art environmental design should simply not be built because it is planned for a location that is not appropriate for mining. 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 or is not appropriate to mine.
