One Gold Band = Twenty TONS of TOXIC Waste! Yes, to make just One Gold Band, there is Twenty TONS of Toxic Waste ! Please DO NOT BUY GOLD for any reason!

written by Mary K. Doyle and posted on “Midwest Mary”, Thursday, May 11 2023

Environment, Jewelry, Mining Pollution

We do love our luxuries and conveniences. Gold, silver, diamonds, and precious jewels make us feel sophisticated, elegant, and important. But how many of us are aware of the impact our adornments have on our planet and the people who live in the areas in which they are mined?

Until recently, I had no idea. One of the blogs that I follow by Barbara Crane Navarro has opened my eyes, and now I realize how much my jewelry has hurt people and our planet.

Most everyone owns at least one piece of gold jewelry, and yet, gold mining is one of the most destructive industries in the world. The process displaces communities, contaminates land and waterways with mercury and cyanide, and causes injuries to workers. The national organization, Earthworks, states on their website that the production of one gold wedding band generates 20 tons of waste from digging and processing the ore.

All mining is damaging, but gold mining is particularly so because it uses a process called heap leaching which includes dripping a cyanide solution through huge piles of ore. This solution strips away the gold for collection and leaves behind 99.99% of what’s mined in piles that are nearly 300 feet high of toxic waste. Surrounding ground water also is contaminated with the cyanide and other dangerous chemicals.

Tailings dams are constructed to retain mine waste. However, according to the UNEP (United Nations Environment Program) there have been more than 221 major tailings dam failures. These failures displace people and contaminate the waters causing death to humanity and wildlife. And shamefully, out of the more than 2,000 major mining companies in the world, only one, BHP Billiton, is taking steps to avoid catastrophic destruction.

Metal mining is destroying beautiful habitats in countries such as Miramar, Costa Rica, and the Dominican Republic as well as our own United States. In fact, Metal mining was the number one toxic polluter in the U.S. in 2010 releasing arsenic, mercury, and lead.

You can find out more about the destruction caused by mining from Earthworks and Barbara Crane Navarro’s blogs.

Mary K. Doyle

About Barbara Crane Navarro - Rainforest Art Project

I'm a French artist living near Paris. From 1968 to 1973 I studied at Rhode Island School of Design in Providence, Rhode Island, then at the San Francisco Art Institute in San Francisco, California, for my BFA. My work for many decades has been informed and inspired by time spent with indigenous communities. Various study trips devoted to the exploration of techniques and natural pigments took me originally to the Dogon of Mali, West Africa, and subsequently to Yanomami communities in Venezuela and Brazil. Over many years, during the winters, I studied the techniques of traditional Bogolan painting. Hand woven fabric is dyed with boiled bark from the Wolo tree or crushed leaves from other trees, then painted with mud from the Niger river which oxidizes in contact with the dye. Through the Dogon and the Yanomami, my interest in the multiplicity of techniques and supports for aesthetic expression influenced my artistic practice. The voyages to the Amazon Rainforest have informed several series of paintings created while living among the Yanomami. The support used is roughly woven canvas prepared with acrylic medium then textured with a mixture of sand from the river bank and lava. This supple canvas is then rolled and transported on expeditions into the forest. They are then painted using a mixture of acrylic colors and Achiote and Genipap, the vegetal pigments used by the Yanomami for their ritual body paintings and on practical and shamanic implements. My concern for the ongoing devastation of the Amazon Rainforest has inspired my films and installation projects. Since 2005, I've created a perfomance and film project - Fire Sculpture - to bring urgent attention to Rainforest issues. To protest against the continuing destruction, I've publicly set fire to my totemic sculptures. These burning sculptures symbolize the degradation of nature and the annihilation of indigenous cultures that depend on the forest for their survival.

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