MATERIALS AND THE ENVIRONMENT
Chapter 6. Designing a New Materials Economy
Lester R. Brown, Eco-Economy: Building an Economy for the Earth
(W.W. Norton & Co., NY: 2001).
The materials used in our modern economy
fall into three categories. The first is metals, including steel,
aluminum, copper, zinc, and lead. The second category is nonmetallic
minerals, such as stone, sand, gravel, limestone, and claymaterials
that are used directly in the building of highways, roads, and buildings
or in manufacturing concrete. This group also includes three mineralsphosphate,
potash, and limethat
are used in agriculture to raise soil fertility. (See Table 6-2.)
The final group of raw materials includes those of organic origin,
such as wood from the forest sector and cotton, wool, and leather
from agriculture.12
In the nonmetallic category, stone at 11 billion tons produced per
year and sand and gravel at 9 billion tons a year totally dominate
other minerals. But stone, sand, and gravel are usually available
locally and do not involve long-distance transport. Used primarily
for the construction of roads, parking lots, and buildings, these
materials are chemically inert. Once stone or gravel is in place
in a roadbed, it may last for generations or even centuries.13
This chapter concentrates on metals because their mining and processing
are so environmentally destructive and energy-intensive. Their production
uses seemingly endless quantities of energy to remove earth to reach
the ore, extract it, transport it to a smelter, and then process
it into a pure metal. What's more, much of this energy comes from
coal, which itself must be mined. Over time, as high-grade ores
have been depleted, miners have shifted to lower-grade ores, inflicting
progressively more environmental damage with each ton of metal produced.14
Ever since the Industrial Age began, steel production has been a
basic indicator of industrialization and economic modernization.
In the late twentieth century, the Soviet Union was the international
steel giant. In the early 1990s, however, the breakdown of Soviet
steel output paralleled the breakdown of the Soviet regime. Currently,
China leads the world in steel production, followed by the United
States and Japan. In quantity, the 833 million tons of raw steel
produced each year (see Figure 6-1) dwarfs the use of all other
metals combined. It compares with 24 million tons of aluminum and
13 million tons of copper, the second and third ranking metals.
While steel consists predominantly of iron, it is an alloy, and
many of its attractive characteristics come from the addition of
small quantities of other metals such as zinc, magnesium, and nickel.15
World steel production per person reached its historical high in
1979 and has since dropped by 20 percent. The decline reflects a
shift to smaller cars, the partial collapse of the former Soviet
economy, and a shift in the growth of advanced industrial economies
from heavy industry to services, especially information services.16
Every year, 1.4 billion tons of ore are mined worldwide to produce
steel primarily for automobiles, household appliances, and construction.
A comparable quantity of ore is mined to produce 13 million tons
of copper. In an age when open pit mining has largely replaced underground
mines, vast areas are physically disfigured. The mine tailings are
then left behindoften
disrupting the flow of nearby streams and contaminating water supplies.
Anything that reduces the use of steel, particularly that produced
from virgin ore, markedly lightens the human footprint on the earth.17
Although aluminum production is quite small compared with steel,
the 24 million tons produced annually greatly understate aluminum's
role because it is such a light, low-density metal. Australia produces
one third of the world's aluminum-containing
bauxite, with Guinea, Jamaica, and Brazil also contributing significantly
to the world total.18
In the United States, well over half of all aluminum use is accounted
for by the food packaging and transportation industries. For beverage
containers, alternative materials such as glass can be used. However,
aircraft, automobiles, and bicycles all currently rely heavily on
aluminum.19
Much of the world's stock of aluminum, with its light weight and
strength, is invested in the fleet of commercial planes. At any
given time, a substantial fraction of the world's aluminum is actually
airborne. With air travel expanding at 6 percent a year, the investment
of aluminum in aircraft is also expanding.20
Although the use of aluminum in aircraft is well established, the
substitution of aluminum for steel in automobiles is more recent,
spurred by rising fuel prices and the desire for better gasoline
mileage. Aluminum use in the average American automobile, for example,
climbed from 87 kilograms in 1991 to 110 kilograms by the end of
the decade. Although aluminum costs far more than steel, the lower
weight of a vehicle with aluminum reduces fuel use, which over the
lifetime of a car can more than offset the extra energy used to
produce aluminum.21
Aluminum production exacts a heavy environmental toll as well, through
both the mining and the smelting processes. Because aluminum typically
occurs in thin layers of bauxite ore, extracting it by surface mining
scars the landscape. For each ton of aluminum produced, a ton of
"red mud"a
caustic brew of chemicals--is left after the bauxite is extracted.
This red muck is left untreated in large, biologically lifeless
ponds, eventually polluting both surface and underground water supplies.22
But most of the damage done by aluminum production comes from generating
electricity to run the smelters. Worldwide, the aluminum industry
uses as much electric power as the entire continent of Africa. In
some cases, the electricity for aluminum smelting comes from coal-fired
power plants, but often it comes from hydroelectricity. Scores of
dams have been built, particularly in remote regions, to produce
cheap electricity to manufacture aluminum. Governments eager to
build indigenous industry in their countries compete with each other
for aluminum smelters by subsidizing the cost of electricity. As
a result, aluminum is one of the world's most heavily subsidized
raw materials.23
Among the metals, gold is distinguished by two thingsits
minute production and vast environmental disruption. In 1991, producing
a meager 2,445 tons of gold required the removal and processing
of more than 741 million tons of orea
mass equal to nearly two thirds of the iron ore used to produce
571 million tons of iron that year. (See Table 6-3.) The leading
gold producer is South Africa. Other producers include Australia,
Brazil, Russia, and the United States. Eighty-five percent of the
gold mined goes into jewelry.24
Beginning in the nineteenth century, gold was used to guarantee
the value of paper currencies. As a result, much of the world's
gold is stored in the vaults of national banks. Once the United
States moved off the gold standard in 1971, however, many countries
followed suit, and some have since sold gold from their vaults,
including Australia, the Bank of England, the Netherlands, and the
Swiss National Bank. This means that gold is being transformed from
the final barometer of the value of paper currency to just another
commodity. The Economist observes that gold is "the spent
fuel of an obsolete monetary system."25
In damage per ton of metal produced, nothing comes close to gold.
Each ton of gold requires the processing of roughly 300,000 tons
of orethe
equivalent of a small mountain. Over the last decade, a new technique
of processing gold ore, called cyanide heap leaching, has come into
widespread use. Cyanide solution is leached through a pile of crushed
ore, picking up bits of gold as it passes through. This reduces
the cost of gold mining, but it leaves behind toxic waste. Cyanide
is so toxic that the ingestion of a teaspoon of 2 percent cyanide
solution will lead to death within 40 seconds.26
In January 2000, a giant spill of 130 million liters of cyanide
solution from a gold mine in Romania drained into the Tisza River,
flowed through Hungary into Yugoslavia, merged with the Danube,
and emptied into the Black Sea. The lethal solution from the Australian-operated
mine left an estimated 1 million kilograms of dead fish in the Hungarian
segment of the river alone. This cyanide spill, which left long
stretches of river lifeless, has been called Europe's worst environmental
disaster since Chernobyl.27
Cyanide spills have occurred in many countries. A similar incident
in 1992 in the Alamosa River, a tributary of the Colorado River
in the United States, killed everything in a 17-mile stretch and
left the state of Colorado with a $170-million cleanup bill after
the company responsible declared bankruptcy.28
Another common mining technology uses mercury to extract gold from
ore. Mercury accumulates in the environment, concentrating as it
moves up the food chain. It was discharges of mercury into Japan's
Minamata Bay a generation ago that demonstrated the brain damage
and birth defects this heavy metal can cause.29
In the Amazon, gold miners release 200,000 pounds of mercury each
year into the ecosystem, reports John Young. Although mercury levels
in fish in the Amazon often exceed the levels for safe human consumption,
people in the area have no alternative protein source. One teaspoon
of mercury in a 25-acre lake can render fish unsafe for human consumption.
No one knows when the effects of mercury intake will begin to show
up as brain damage and birth defects in the Amazon, but we do know
that they first appeared in Japanese infants roughly a decade after
fertilizer plants began releasing mercury into Minamata Bay.30
Aside from the discharge of highly toxic cyanide and mercury into
the ecosystem, gold mining is also a physically dangerous activity.
In South Africa, where most of the gold comes from underground,
death in the mines is routine, claiming one life for each ton of
gold produced.31
Gold is not the only metal that is damaging the planet. The extraction
of other metals, such as copper, lead, and zinc, also disfigures
the landscape and pollutes the environment. Reducing this destruction
of the natural landscape and the pollution of air, water, and soil
depends on designing a new materials economy, one where mining industries
are largely replaced by recycling industries.
Table 6-2. World Production of Nonmetallic
Minerals |
Mineral |
Production
|
|
(million
tons)
|
Stone |
11,000
|
Sand and gravel |
9,000
|
Clays |
500
|
Salt |
210
|
Phosphate rock |
139
|
Lime |
117
|
Gypsum |
110
|
Soda ash |
31
|
Potash |
26
|
|
Source: See endnote 12. |
Table 6-3. Metal Production and Ore Mined
for Each Metal, 1991 |
Metal |
Production
|
Ore
Mined
|
Ore
Mined Per Ton of Metal Produced
|
|
(tons)
|
(tons)
|
(tons)
|
Iron |
571,000,000
|
1,428,000,000
|
3
|
Copper |
12,900,000
|
1,418,000,000
|
110
|
Gold |
2,445
|
741,000,000
|
303,000
|
Zinc |
8,000,000
|
1,600,000,000
|
200
|
Lead |
2,980,000
|
119,000,000
|
40
|
Aluminum |
23,900,000
|
104,000,000
|
4
|
Manganese |
7,450,000
|
25,000,000
|
3
|
Nickel |
1,230,000
|
49,000,000
|
40
|
Tin |
200,000
|
20,000,000
|
100
|
Tungsten |
31,500
|
13,000,000
|
400
|
|
Source: U.S. Geological Survey;
John E. Young, Mining the Earth (Washington, DC: Worldwatch
Institute, July 1992); W.K. Fletcher, Department of Earth and
Ocean Sciences, University of British Columbia |
ENDNOTES:
12.
Table 6-2 from USGS, op. cit. note 4, with stone, sand and gravel,
and clays from Young, op. cit. note 4.
13. Young, op. cit. note 4, p. 9.
14. Ibid.
15. Soviet Union, United States, and China in IISI, op. cit. note
7; Figure 6-1 compiled from IISI; metals production from USGS, op.
cit. note 4.
16. Historical steel production to 1995 from Hal Kane, "Steel Production
Rebounds Slightly," in Lester R. Brown et al., Vital Signs 1996
(New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 1996), p. 79; current steel production
of 833 million tons from USGS, op. cit. note 4; population from
United Nations, op. cit. note 5.
17. USGS, op. cit. note 4.
18. John E. Young, "Aluminum Production Keeps Growing," in Worldwatch
Institute, Vital Signs 2001 (New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 2001),
p. 64; Australia and other countries from John E. Young, "Aluminum's
Real Tab," World Watch, March/April 1992, p. 27.
19. The Aluminum Association, Inc., "Aluminum Facts at a Glance,"
fact sheet (Washington, DC: June 2000).
20. Lisa Mastny, "World Air Traffic Soaring," in Lester R. Brown
et al., Vital Signs 1999 (New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 1999),
pp. 86-87.
21. The Aluminum Association, Inc., "Aluminum: An American Industry
in Profile" (Washington, DC: 2000), p. 2; Carole Vaporean, "Aluminum
Moves to Third Place in Car Content," Reuters, 16 February 2001.
22. Young, "Aluminum's Real Tab," op. cit. note 18.
23. Electricity use by aluminum industry from Young, "Aluminum Production
Keeps Growing," op. cit. note 18; African electricity use in 1999
from U.S. Department of Energy, Energy Information Agency, "World
Total Net Electricity Consumption, 1990-1999," www.eia.doe.gov/emeu/iea/table62.html;
Young, op. cit. note 4, p. 26.
24. Payal Sampat, "Gold Loses Its Luster," in Lester R. Brown et
al., Vital Signs 2000 (New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 2000), pp.
80-81; 85 percent of gold in jewelry from "Don't Mine Gold for Jewels,"
Reuters, 10 December 2000.
25. Sampat, op. cit. note 24; "Central-Bank Gold: Melting Away,"
The Economist, 4 April 1992.
26. Young, op. cit. note 6, pp. 22-23.
27. "Hungary Seeks Millions in Damages for Cyanide Spill," Associated
Press, 11 July 2000; worst since Chernobyl from "International Mining
Groups Call for Worldwide Mining Law Reforms," press release (Washington,
DC: Friends of the Earth, Mineral Policy Center, and Mineral Policy
Institute, 15 December 2000).
28. Timothy Egan, "The Death of a River Looms Over Choice for Interior
Post," New York Times, 7 January 2001; "Cyanide-Spill Suit Is Settled
in Colorado," New York Times, 24 December 2000.
29. Young, op. cit. note 6, p. 25; Minamata Bay update in Peter
Hadfield, "Court Win Follows 40 Years of Suffering," South China
Morning Post, 2 May 2001.
30. John E. Young, "Gold Production at Record High," in Lester R.
Brown et al., Vital Signs 1994 (New York: W.W. Norton & Company,
1994), pp. 82-83; Patricia Glick, The Toll From Coal (Washington,
DC: National Wildlife Federation, April 2000), p. 9.
31. Roger Moody, "The Lure of Gold: How Golden Is the Future?" Panos
Media Briefing No. 9 (London: Panos Institute, 1996).
Copyright
© 2001 Earth Policy Institute
|
|