Epilogue - Thanatia: The Destiny of the Earth's Mineral Resources - page 512

Fig. 17.1 Spiralling tree of an element, showing its Grand Natural Cycle
of recycling operations, the spirals thin out meaning that the element has diffused
over the technosphere. At this point (in the final life phases) Man's ability to
recover the element is greatly reduced, with urban mines, should an element be
present in su cient (commercially recoverable) concentration, representing one of
the last chances of salvaging from landfill. In this sense, the latter shares the trait
of being a “provider” of minerals with the geosphere. The cycle goes thus from the
geosphere to the technosphere when a mineral is mined, before entering Thanatia
upon dispersal and chemical degradation (oxidation). The minerals on reaching
this ultimate stage are only naturally recoverable over eons or following the use of
immense quantities of commercial energy, water and reagents. Indeed, the roots of
the tree feed the mines through sedimentary, metamorphic and igneous processes
over geological time scales. On the contrary, technology exhausts them over human
time scales. That said, manmade technology can accelerate or decelerate the cy-
cles. A technologically underdeveloped society builds elementary trees consisting of
single spirals immediately returning to Thanatia, whilst technologically advanced
ones build intricate trees representative of the recycling processes that have been
developed there.
Since each element has its own tree, the periodic table would constitute a spi-
ralling forest that grows as complex as the elements that are in use in the techno-
sphere and as intricate as the recycling technologies that are being developed. As
in the Earth's biosphere, there is a diversity of volumes and forms, from trees to
shrubs. This forest is very small when compared with the vastness of the crust,
given that mines are very scarce.