One golden ring means 20 tons of waste
Goldmining is one of the most polluting industries of the World.
People living near the mines pay the price, but nobody listens to their protest. This is true for the Maya people in the department of San Marcos in Guatemala. A Canadian company is digging gold there, but only 1 percent of the profit stays in Guatemala, the rest goes to Canada.
In the meantime forests are cut down, wells dry up and groundwater is polluted with heavy metals. The authorities in Guatemala do not listen to the local people. But they keep complaining of being suppressed in their own country. They want to develop their land in their own way, keeping their own culture.
8 facts about gold mining:
- One golden ring means at least 20 tons of waste.
- Open mines destroy whole landscapes, mountaintops are removed and enormous craters result. Open mining produces 8 to 10 times more waste than mining underground.
- Cyanide is being used to separate gold from the rock. Polluton with cyanides is a serious problem: a piece of cyanide as small as a grain of rice is enough to kill a person; concentrations of 1 microgram per liter water is fatal for fishes.
- Mining companies give employment for only 0,09 percent of working people worldwide but uses 10 percent of the energy worldwide.
- Between 1995 and 2015 about half of the global gold production happens in regions where native peoples live.
- Mining is the biggest polluter in the USA, causes 89 procent of the arsenicum pollution, 85 percent of the mercury and 84 percent of lead pollution.
- The greatest open mine of the world, Bingham Canyon mine in Utah USA, is visible from space: 1,5 km deep en 4 km wide.
- 120.000 tonnes of poisonous waste from the Baia Mare goldmine in Rumenia polluted in the year 2000 the drinking water of 2,5 milions of people and killed 1.240 tonnes of fish.
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