Just Go Dump Your Mining Wastes on the Native Americans: A Recycling Story

The Quapaw Native American town of Picher, Oklahoma once had the biggest lead mine in the world. Half of all the zinc and lead used by the United States in World War I came from this mine. For a while the mine was extremely profitable. Part of the reason is that the external costs (externalities) were simply ignored: the corporation just dumped their mine tailings in big mounds which leaked contaminants into the water in Picher. The corporation closed the mine and moved out, leaving the local Native Americans to deal with the ensuing health crisis. Many of the children had dangerous levels of lead in their blood. In 2009, the school closed and the town shut down except for a few defiant Quapaws who stay (presumably with clean water trucked in?) and fly the tribal flag.

Our economy needs rare earth and other toxic metals. The computer on which I am writing, and on which you are reading this essay, require them. But currently forty percent of rare earth elements come from China. Just a week ago China announced restrictions on the export of francium and germanium. Now what do we do? Fortunately, Sweden (new NATO member!) found a big deposit of rare elements. (Because of their similar chemical properties, they are often found together in ores.) But it will take at least a decade for this deposit to supply our industrial chain, since unlike China Sweden has careful environmental guidelines.

An alternative is recycling. Already, electronic recycling is big business. If we can get new germanium and yttrium and ytterbium for our new electronics from our old electronics, there is no need for mining. Recycling makes more economic sense in some situations (such as aluminum) than in others (such as plastic). But if the alternative to recycling is to dump toxins on our fellow humans, recycling is always worth the cost. Do we all want to become a toxic ghost town like Picher, Oklahoma?

Even a gorilla can understand this. In a video, I explain this to a gorilla, which was the mascot of the Picher schools before they closed.