Environmental risk of mining - Environmental Deterioration and Contamination: Problems and their Management - page 122

In addition to environmental damage due to extraction and processing, the ever
longer transport distances between extraction, processing and final consumption loca-
tions and uncontrolled resource depletion should be mentioned. The target of mining
is the nonrenewable natural resources of fossil fuels, metal ores, industrial and con-
struction materials. The steadily growing resource extraction particularly affects metal
ores, including those expected to become depleted soon.
Rare Earth Elements (REEs) are used in electronics, medicine and defense. Their
use is extremely wide from computer hard drives to catalytic converters, wind turbines
to hybrid cars, and sunglasses to lasers. China has an almost complete monopoly
on mining REEs. Despite having just 37 percent of the world's estimated reserves, a
whopping 97 per cent of world production now comes from China, according to a
British Geological Survey report (Graedel et al. , 2011).
The estimate of Reller and Graedel (2006) for the case if the world consumes at
today's rate, is that copper will last for 61 years, uranium for 59, zinc for 46, gold
for 45, lead for 42, tin for 40, antimony for 30, silver for 29 and indium for 13
years. Moreover, they predict an increase in consumption due to population growth
and newly appearing technologies' demand. As a consequence, the above-mentioned
periods will further decrease and also hafnium, tantalum and silver shortages can be
expected within 15-20 years. The risk of depletion of gallium, rhodium and germanium
is also high.
Recycling of metals would alleviate the problem of depletion, but the recycling
rate today is very variable for each metal. Lead is in the lead with 72%, when con-
sidering consumer products proportion from recycled metals; aluminum 49%, gold
43%, germanium 35%, copper 31%, zinc 26%, chromium 25%, silver 16%. Indium,
gallium and platinum are not recycled at all. Most of the platinum and palladium are
lost as street dust (about 0.5 mg/kg); they are not recycled from sweepings.
An important “reserve'' is the in-use fraction of metals (Gerst & Graedel, 2008).
UNEP (2010) reports estimates on the amount of metals “in society'', in different life
cycle phases, such as under production, in constructions and in final goods. Estimates
on per capita mass and years of residence time give an interesting picture. The residence
time of the metals mainly depends on their type of use: in construction and building it
can be 30-50 years, but in batteries and as packaging material only 1-2 years. The per
capita in-use amount of aluminum world-wide is 82 kg and 480 kg in the US. Copper
world: 50 kg, EU: 190 kg, USA: 294 kg. The 1947 world average of 19 kg from lead
decreased to 8 kg for 2000, but it is still 146 kg in the USA and 120-210 kg in the
European countries. For gold it is 92 g/capita in the US, which is equivalent to 150
years' demand calculated at the 2006 level.
6 ENVIRONMENTAL PROBLEMS CAUSED BY MINE ACCIDENTS
Mining companies in most countries are required to follow stringent environmen-
tal and rehabilitation codes in order to minimize environmental impact and avoid
impacts on human health. These codes and regulations all require the common steps of
environmental impact assessment, development of environmental management plans,
mine closure planning (which must be done before the start of mining operations) and