Social and economic development rests on an extensive network of a wide range of infrastructures: homes, transport systems, communications installations, etc. Nowadays minerals and metals are basic materials for building many of these infrastructures. Metals (copper, iron, aluminium and others), industrial minerals (gypsum, lime) and building materials, (sand, stone) are used in an infinite number of products, but their presence is so closely bound to everyday life that we are rarely aware of them. While all these materials themselves go unnoticed, the origins of minerals and metals and the paths they trace to reach our homes, our cities and our surroundings are even more of a mystery.

		Human infrastuctures are mainly built from minerals.

These materials are obtained through mining, an activity going back a long way. Since earliest times, mineral resources have been exploited, but it was after the Industrial Revolution, and especially in the course of the twentieth century, that this exploitation grew out of all proportion.

		Mineral extraction generates big amounts of waste.

Mineral extraction leaves a profound mark on the land and radically affects the local societies. The scale of today's great mining projects alters entire ecosystems, forces thousands of people to migrate and destroys unique natural assets.

THE NATURAL SURROUNDINGS, THE WORST AFFECTED

Mining is an activity with severe environmental effects. First of all, many reserves of metals and minerals are located in areas of great biological and cultural wealth. This is why there are so many mines in these places and for the same reason plans for future mines are located in areas in similar situations. The threat affects 40% of forests and, above all, affects ecosystems that are unique on the planet.

		Biological diversity should be preserved.

Secondly, the amount of waste produced by mining is spectacular and the effects of this waste are felt far away. To get an idea, one ton of copper produces 110 tons of stones and waste, and one ton of gold produces 300,000 tons of waste. Mines move more materials than all the world's rivers together, and in Canada alone produce more than 1,000 million tons of waste a year, 60 times as much as all the waste of all the cities put together. This waste is dumped indiscriminately in rivers all over the world and destroys every life form it meets. At the very best, the waste is stored in immense pools. However, it has been noted that 75% of environmental accidents since 1975 have been related with the breaking of the retaining walls of pools holding mining waste.

Furthermore, in subsequent processes, when the mineral is extracted from the ore in which it is contained, different chemical products are used, some of which are highly toxic, such as cyanide, which is then also dumped in rivers or buried without any preventive measures, thus contaminating soils and groundwater.

From the point of view of energy, mining is a very expensive business. Mines and mineral processing (without counting transport) consume 10% of the world's energy. It therefore plays an important part in planetary warming. In addition, low transport costs mean that new materials can travel great distances to their destination. For example, the copper extracted in Chile is cast in Europe, used to make car radiators in Japan for cars that are eventually driven in the United States of America. This means a big increase in carbon dioxide emissions. But mining also emits rarer gases called PFCs, whose greenhouse effect is between 6,000 and 9,000 times worse than CO2's. Although emissions have been reduced in recent years, in 1997 19 million tons of PFCs were released into the atmosphere.

The situation has got worse in recent years because low energy costs have allowed their intensive use and this has made for the proliferation of open-cast mines in out-of-the-way places and the extraction of ores of lower quality, which in turn has caused enormous changes in the landscape.

MINING, A SOURCE OF UNEMPLOYMENT

There are also other consequences that often go unnoticed. Employment-wise, mining plays a small part in the global economy (less than 1%). On the other hand, the social costs are enormous (5% of deaths at work). Mining is one of the activities with the highest accident rate. Research shows that 40 people die every day. What's more, a large part of the workforce works in dreadful conditions of semi-slavery and many children are involved.

		Mining is hard activity that should be recycled.

On the other hand, mining is not really an economic improvement for the countries that have to put up with it. It is not a basic economic source for any developed country and mining regions in these countries are very depressed areas. Nevertheless, the economies of some developing countries are closely linked to mining. Research shows that those countries that depend to a large extent on mining have slower per capita growth rates than other countries and are also countries with a high level of corruption.

		The fall of mineral prices leaves countries bankrupt.

A NEW FUTURE FOR MINING

Humanity's progress calls for a more efficient use of minerals. Recycling avoids constant mineral extraction. If the aluminium of the seven million tin cans thrown away in the United States of America between 1990 and 2000 had been recycled, there would have been enough to build 316,000 Boeing 737s, 25% of the total world fleet.

Recycling also saves energy. If aluminium, steel and copper were recycled, the energy used in obtaining metals could be reduced by 70%, more than the entire energy consumption of Southern Asia, where 25% of the world population lives. Recycled aluminium saves 95% of the energy used in mining and processing bauxite (the mineral from which aluminium is extracted).

		Aluminium is easy to recycle and expensive to produce.

Recycling offers more employment opportunities and is safer. It is therefore an important help to a sector already in existence. This sector must grow if it is to respond to current needs. For example, products can be designed in such a way that they can be dismantled. This is what the Audi firm has done, producing a car that can be completely dismantled so as to recycle the materials.

Direct and underhand economic aid to mining companies must also disappear. Companies should not receive subventions for mines and should take responsibility for their environmental and social impact. They should be obliged to recover affected areas. To compensate, financial aid should further selective collection of metals, support companies processing metals so that they can recycle them, encourage the creation of new businesses for the purpose of recycling minerals and, lastly, must drive innovation in this field.

Governments must introduce measures to carry these reforms through. Some of these reforms are already being carried out in Denmark, where the use of aluminium for tin cans has been banned. The European Union has also passed a directive making it compulsory to retrieve the scrap iron from cars (something which encourages redesign).

In spite of the reforms, a small part of our minerals will still have to come from mines. For this reason, mining must be reformed and adapted to far more efficient and less polluting processes.

We also need a cultural change, because having more will not make life better and one particular case of this is gold mining. The world can certainly do without 2,400 tons of gold every year, 80% of which is used for jewellery, if obtaining this metal has the effects we have seen.