Green Silver Mining: The Key to Sustainable Technology

By Richard Verkley, June 2019

Towards an ecological society — the role of green mining

Humanity is facing an existential dilemma. On the one hand, we need to be kinder to the earth if we are to avoid ecological catastrophe. On the other, many of the practices that are damaging our planet — climate, creatures and communities alike — are essential to our quality of life. Our new challenge is one we must face together. Can we transform technology to coexist with nature? In this series, we examine the role of mining practices in rising to this challenge.

This is part two in the series. For part one, click here.

A journey into silver mining’s past

When trying to divine the future of society, we can learn a lot from the past. While technology, knowledge and social arrangements change, the same forces that drive society’s development — such as the pursuit of prosperity and security — persist. So, let’s begin by diving into silver mining’s ancient history.

Silver — mined from surrounding regions like Anatolia — was first utilised in 4th millennium BCE Mesopotamia.[1] Having settled in this fertile land, people domesticated animals and developed agriculture. Next, came trade.[2] To exchange goods and labour on a wider scale, people needed a common means of quantifying value. Silver, a soft metal that could be cut to exact weights, was ideal — and so it evolved into currency.[3] The knock-on effects echo throughout history. Writing was invented to facilitate long-distance communication required by trade, and for recording accounts.[4] Surplus production and the complex needs of collective management saw the birth of the first cities.[5] A similar pattern occurred across much of the ancient world, from Egypt to Rome, as silver advanced trade and the growth of empires.

Mesopotamia also serves as a cautionary tale, however. Once the “cradle of civilisation”, by 500 BCE its major cities of Ur, Eridu and Uruk had all been abandoned. Overuse of surrounding land left the regions barren.[6] This cycle has repeated itself many times since. As historian Lewis Mumford notes, “the blind forces of urbanization, flowing along the lines of least resistance, show no aptitude for creating an urban and industrial pattern that will be stable, self-sustaining, and self-renewing.”[7] Indeed, Mexico — the world’s largest silver producer[8] — still bears the mark of its colonial-era mining practices. Northern Mexico benefited from infrastructure like transport networks. Yet much of its countryside has never recovered from deforestation. It is littered with ghost towns who exhausted their natural resources.[9]

The challenges we face today

In the modern era, we confront a far greater threat. In the past, exhausted land could be abandoned for greener pastures. A global economy shifts this dynamic. A water-shortage on one side of the world can see people on the other going hungry.[10] Moreover, without serious changes, we will render not just regions, but the entire planet, unliveable.[11]

Mining is heavily reliant on fossil fuel generated electricity.[12] Current methods of extracting and processing metals and other minerals account for 26% of global carbon emissions.[13] Many mining techniques use vast quantities of water, which can deplete fresh-water supplies surrounding them.[14] Contamination of water with dangerous chemicals exacerbates this problem.

Silver, specifically, occurs in a range of polymetallic ores — including lead-zinc, copper, and gold.[15] The chemical impacts thus vary, depending on extraction technique. Artisanal and small-scale mining (ASM) provides one striking case study. While the name might suggest otherwise, this constitutes a massive industry — estimates vary between 40 and 100 million people, worldwide.[16] As with gold,[17] gold-silver ores are combined with mercury for extraction — but using up to 20 times the quantity.[18] Mercury then poisons surrounding soil and waterbodies. What’s worse, some modern ASM techniques use cyanidation to process the tailings left behind. This creates a mercury-cyanide complex which can travel even further and increase bioaccumulation in aquatic organisms; multiplying its environmental impact significantly.[19]

Forging a brighter future

Many of these problems are not unique to mining. Carbon emissions, water-shortages and pollution occur across many industries.[20] Mining may, however, be uniquely positioned to spearhead sustainable solutions. Silver has many vital industrial uses today, including in electronics, brazing and soldering, and engines.[21] But it also has the potential to subvert “blind” urbanisation and unrestrained exploitation of resources, by empowering eco-technology.

Silver is a key component in creating solar energy. Photovoltaic cells use silver to capture and carry electrical current,[22] transmitting it for immediate use or storage in batteries.[23] It is used in energy-efficient LED lights, and can be employed in silver-zinc batteries in electric cars.[24] One of the most exciting possibilities is its role in superconductors. While silver is not a superconductor itself, pairing it with one enables faster electricity transmission.[25] This has profound implications. First, superconductors can generate magnetic electricity in renewable energy sources: wind turbines and hydro power plants.[26] Next, they can be utilised in superconducting transmission lines, which have lower electrical losses in high-capacity transmission. This alone equates to reduced carbon emissions. Better yet, their efficiency makes substantial transmission from remote renewable energy sources feasible.[27] Superconductors have numerous other technological applications, including energy storage and magnetic levitation trains.[28]

So, we can build green technology and infrastructure and power them with renewable energy. We then come, full circle, to the elephant in the room: mining. These technologies cannot be truly sustainable if they rely on silver mining practices that are anything but.

Eco Metal Recovery’s new technology, The Separator, seeks to change all this. It does not require mercury or cyanide for its extraction process, instead using only water. Water is then recycled in a closed system — only small additional amounts, due to evaporation, will be needed. It also achieves a significantly higher recovery rate, making it more efficient. Finally, the Separator does all this with incredibly little energy — so little, in fact, that it may be operated entirely on solar power.

Applied together in a system, these innovations could transform our relationship with technology. Just as silver-mining in Mesopotamia played a role in civilisation’s formation, now it can empower its evolution. Historically, development has come at the expense of environmental destruction. Green mining opens the door to an eco-future: one that is stable, self-sustaining and self-renewing.

Eco Metals Recovery’s goal is to change the way the world mines: to work with the planet’s ecology, not against it; to build a mining system that benefits humanity as a whole. We invite you to join our mission — you can find out more here:

Website:
https://ecometalsrecovery.com/

LinkedIn:
https://www.linkedin.com/company/ecometalsrecovery

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC3foWhgwFvBz8sKrwpXYOVQ