If we want to escape mining, give up your car, electronics, and appliances. That said, we should be making a more robust recycling system and standards to make things easier to recycle, then we could in theory reduce our dependance on mining new minerals.
This could be a false dichotomy, not only because of recycling, but also because we could make things …gasp… last longer. The amount of trash we generate currently that we could recycle is the result of the system maximizing profits. But if we do as we do today, it is how you say it is. Then even if we change how we make things, we still need to build a lot of stuff to cope with climate change and that’ll probably require new material.
Getting rid of the disposable culture would help a lot, and not only making things last longer but making them possible to be repaired would go a long way too. And not possible in the sense of ship it back to the factory where they have a special screwdriver for that one bolt, we need to be repairable with reasonable tools and knowledge for most things.
There’s a multi-GW wind project for Atlantic Canada.
There’s no escape from mining. Copper is required for almost everything electric.
If we want to escape mining, give up your car, electronics, and appliances. That said, we should be making a more robust recycling system and standards to make things easier to recycle, then we could in theory reduce our dependance on mining new minerals.
This could be a false dichotomy, not only because of recycling, but also because we could make things …gasp… last longer. The amount of trash we generate currently that we could recycle is the result of the system maximizing profits. But if we do as we do today, it is how you say it is. Then even if we change how we make things, we still need to build a lot of stuff to cope with climate change and that’ll probably require new material.
Getting rid of the disposable culture would help a lot, and not only making things last longer but making them possible to be repaired would go a long way too. And not possible in the sense of ship it back to the factory where they have a special screwdriver for that one bolt, we need to be repairable with reasonable tools and knowledge for most things.