Why not recycle metals instead of continue extracting non-ferrous metals?

Extraction of metals has been posing various risks over the environment from time immemorial. Those who support a sustainable development of our planet offer another approach. Why continue digging the earth’s womb to extract ores and minerals, if we can have the same metals after recycling products with metal content. Nearly 40 precious elements, mainly copper, tin, cobalt, antimony and other rare metals are used in the manufacture of mobile phones. People throw away millions of old mobile phones and other electronic devices which can be viewed as “a gold mine” and definitely deserve our attention.

Mining industry consumes two other significant resources- farmland and water

In the regions where minerals are extracted, the mining industry competes with other human activities which use farmland and water. The Communist period has left us striking examples of how farmlands can be demolished. One of these examples is the Maritsa Coal Basin which is situated in the heart of the Thracian Valley, known for its rich humus soil, reminds Dragomira Raeva from the For the Earth environmental association. The conflict between the mining industry and the activities using water is even deeper. A similar problem stems from the planned activity of a large Canadian mining company which is set to extract gold from the Ada Tepe golden deposit field near the town of Krumovgrad, the Eastern Rhodopes.

“A mining company will use large quantities of water for its production and operate in a region where draft is typical for the summer season, says Dragomira Raeva. “This questions the supplies of water for irrigation and drinking water to the local households.”

Waste repositories are biggest problem of Bulgaria’s mining industry

The huge quantities of refuse left after the mineral extraction are the biggest problem of the Bulgarian mining industry. The last report of Eurostat made in 2008 showed that Bulgaria is the country which produced the biggest quantity of mining refuse-150,000 tons, says Mrs Raeva. Waste repositories are the biggest polluter of the environment as these huge lakes consisting of refuse waters used in the mineral extraction contain a cocktail of heavy metals and toxic compounds. Similar problems existed in the past and the companies which operate in the mining sphere at present often use them as an excuse when they are accused of inaction. Such is the case regarding the exploitation of the copper mines in the town of Panaguyrishte (Central South Bulgaria).

“The rocks from the gold deposit near Krumovgrad for example contain huge quantities of arsenic”, Mrs Raeva goes on to say. “When this rock gets excavated, fractured and later exposed to wind and sun and comes into contact with water, the highly-toxic arsenic could separate from it and penetrate into the soil. It may cause serious pollution in the whole region.”

Cyanides-a battle already won

Bulgaria is among the European countries with richest gold deposits. Such deposits were exploited back in antiquity. Their gold was used for the making of many wonderful golden treasures found by the Bulgarian archaeologists on these lands. However, gold in these ores is mixed with arsenic. The coalition of environmental organizations entitled Cyanide Free Bulgaria has already won a very important battle. The mining companies were banned from using the most lucrative technology for processing of gold ores through the use of cyanide compounds. The huge quantity of arsenic mixed with cyanides could pose a very high risk over the population. The battle against the Canadian company which tried to use cyanide technology to process gold ore at the Chelopech mine was very long and difficult. However, it ended with a decision which prohibited the company from processing ore in Bulgaria. Instead, the Canadian company started to transport its ore to Namibia where the processing currently takes place.

The large public resistance against the cyanide technology forced this company abandon its ideas to use it in its future exploitation of Ada Tepe gold deposit field.The environmental coalition Cyanide Free Bulgaria and the Green Party demand a law which would ban the cyanide method in all industries in Bulgaria and the EU.

“According to the European Commission, the current environmental standards guarantee that the use of the cyanides in the mining industry does not harm environment and public health”, says Mrs Raeva. “However, these standards do not take into account all technical failures which will happen sooner or later. We all remember the accident in the gold mine near the Romanian town of Baia Mare back in 2000. Many Romanian rivers were polluted by a spillage from the waste repository. The cyanide pollution even reached the Danube River. It poisoned tons of fish and covered in toxic mud many farmlands near the river in Hungary, Romania and Serbia.”

Control is what matters the most

Control is the weakest link in the mining industry, as well as in many other spheres in Bulgaria, environmentalists claim. The Mineral Resources Act also hides problems as, according to the European Commission, it does not include all requirements of the European Mining Waste Directive. A commission has already initiated a punitive procedure against Bulgaria as it failed to apply this European regulation.

English version: Kostadin Atanasov