Mining and Metals

Welcome to the Mining and Metals portal on Powerbase

This portal reports and exposes the spin and lobbying by the metals and mining industry. In particular we investigate the UK's complicity in the activities of companies registered on the London Stock Exchange, the epicentre of mining investment and metals price fixing worldwide. We reveal their links to government, the banking sector, think tanks, NGOs and the arms industry. We also document the effects of mining and processing on communities and the environment in the UK and worldwide, and expose attempts to 'greenwash' this. Why mining and metals? Metals are all around us – from your can of lemonade, to your bike, car or plane, to your laptop, buildings and pots and pans. But we rarely think about where these materials come from and what impact they have on the planet and people. Mining and metals companies, with the support of their trade associations, think tanks, corporate social responsibility programmes and PR agencies, try to paint their products as clean and green. Yet these are among the most polluting and energy intensive industrial processes in the world, often linked to the displacement of indigenous peoples, poor working conditions, conflict, human rights abuses, pollution, climate change and militarisation. This portal is part of Powerbase—your guide to networks of power, lobbying and deceptive PR. Powerbase has a policy of strict referencing and is overseen by a Managing editor, a Sysop and several associate Portal editors.

The aluminium industry Aluminium is more energy intensive and polluting than any other metal to produce. The industry goes to great lengths to portray this shiny and versatile metal as part of the solution to climate change due to its recyclability and lightweight nature. But the real story of aluminium is one of destruction, displacement and waste: • Bauxite (aluminium's ore) is shallow strip mined from semi tropical forests, often displacing indigenous peoples and destroying their livelihoods, as well as creating large scale soil erosion and water pollution. • Bauxite is refined to produce alumina, leaving tonnes of 'red mud' - the caustic and toxic sludge that flooded several Hungarian towns in 2010. • Alumina is then smelted to remove the strongly bonded oxygen and produce aluminium. This process is often carried out thousands of miles from where it was mined and requires huge amounts of energy, producing highly polluting fluorides, sulphur dioxide, perfluorocarbons (very strong greenhouse gases), cyanide and a classified hazardous waste called Spent Pot Lining. • Producing one tonne of aluminium uses 1378 tonnes of water and produces 13.1 tons of greenhouse gases (CO2e), making it responsible for 1 per cent of global carbon emissions - and growing. Though recycling aluminium uses 95 per cent less energy than making it new, it still uses the same amount as producing new steel. • Around 30 per cent of aluminium is used by the arms or 'defence' industry, making it an important 'strategic metal' for most governments. Companies British-registered Indian aluminium company Vedanta has been exposed for human rights and environmental violations in its quest for 73 million tonnes of Bauxite from the tribal mountain homeland of the Dongria Kondh. headings

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