How does recycling reduce mining?

How does recycling reduce mining?

Recycling reduces mining and drilling, which produce air and water pollution. By saving energy, recycling reduces the air pollution caused by with burning fossil fuels such as coal, natural gas, and oil, which contributes to the largest amount of energy generated.

Does recycling reduce the need for mining?

Recycling reduces the need for extracting (mining, quarrying and logging), refining and processing raw materials. All of these create substantial air and water pollution. As recycling saves energy it also reduces greenhouse gas emissions, which helps to tackle climate change.

How can recycling metals help prevent damage from mining?

There is lots of energy that is used up in the mining process in terms of fueling, man-hours and the refinery process of the metals. If metals are recycled, there will be a reduction of the carbon emissions into the atmosphere and therefore less pollution.

Why is recycling a better alternative to mining?

Recycling is a viable solution as it requires significantly less energy per kilogramme of metal, and also reduces the impact of mining. For example, a mobile phone can contain more than 40 elements, including base metals such as copper and tin and precious and platinum-group metals such as silver, gold and palladium.

What are the disadvantages of recycling metals?

Disadvantages

• Many of the recycled metals are impure.
• Sorting metals can cost lots of time and money.
• Recycling may not meet up to the demands of certain metals so a constant supply will not be met.

Which is better for the environment, recycling or mining?

Probably more important in a time of growing concern about and need for action against climate change: recycling requires significantly less energy than mining. Re-melting and casting an existing metal is simply a lot easier than having to extract the metal from an ore.

How is recycling a good way to save energy?

The largest energy savings achieved by recycling are generally for metals, which are often easy to recycle and otherwise typically need to be produced by energy-intensive mining and processing of ore. For example, energy savings from beryllium recycling are 80%, 5 lead 75%, 9 iron and steel 72%, 9 and cadmium 50%. 10

How can we mitigate environmental impacts from mining?

Sealing exposed surfaces in underground workings with a coating of material that is non-reactive or impermeable to inhibit the oxidation process. Backfilling mine workings with reactive materials that can neutralize and treat waters that pass through them.

How does recycling reduce the need for raw materials?

Increasing recycling rates decreases the need for raw materials and removes a big part of processing from the equation. For example, using recycled aluminum saves more than 90% of the energy required for producing aluminum from raw materials.