• Mining

    • Mining gives us the stuff we need to produce energy, houses, cars, computers, and thousands of other products. But mining can be nasty business.

    • Mining

  • Gold mining

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  • tons mined
  • globally, this year

    • 2,400 tons a year

    Every year the world produces an amount of gold that would fit into a cube of just 5 meters on each side.

    Gold history

    Human history has produced 161,000 tons of gold. This is a lot, but the world pours the same amount of steel in just 75 minutes.

    Gold is ruthless business

    Half of the gold produced is currently mined in areas that traditionally are home to native people. The land rights of these people are often not recognized and many are forced to leave.

    Child miners

    Gold mining is extremely dangerous work for children. Yet still today, tens of thousands are found in the small-scale gold mines of Africa, Asia and South America.

    The waste produced in gold mining is shocking !

    On average, only 0.00001% of the ore that is mined is refined into gold. The remaining 99.9999% is waste - much of it is highly toxic.

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