What's Yours (and cannot be grown) is Mined. What’s Mined Is ...Yours;

In every part of the world, and in every important or trivial aspect of our lives – every time we eat or drink, write or paint, wash, cook, travel, or simply sit in the hearth of our home – we avail ourselves of some derivative of metallic and nonmetallic mineral ores.

From our faded jeans to our toothpaste; our televisions and mobile phones, or even a seemingly-trivial product like cat litter; from solar panels to cosmetics -- all of these products, use processed minerals. And the list is endless. Even if we are largely unaware of it, minerals exist in and affect our daily lives, and we co-exist intricately with them. What’s yours (and can’t be grown) has to be mined!

However, we have to think it from another point of view aswell. If you’ve never heard of tantalum (and coltan) don’t be alarmed just yet. It, like many other “magical” materials, are refined into the clandestine cocktail of components that allow our hi-tech devices to do what they do. However, you may want to reconsider what “hi-tech” really means. Behind the pretty touch screen of your mobile phone–and beneath the sensuous shell of your laptop, camera, or game console–lies someone else’s nightmare..

One of the most perverse elements of this whole equation is that what originates in the Congo under horrendous conditions is refined and manufactured into technology in China, is consumed by us so that we can check e-mail and make phone calls, and is then quite often cracked, smashed and melted down by villagers in search of raw materials back in China, where up to 80% of our “recycled” electronic waste is doomed to spend eternity. It’s a shocking cycle, a never ending "story", which we have accepted!

So, we consider that everything ever mined (everywhere in the world and under any condition) is ours, ready to be used without ethical arguments!

The next time you want to lackadaisically upgrade your iPod or cell phone, keep in mind where its circuitry might have come from. Curiosity will kill the crimes, so be curious about your technology. . . and remember that what’s cheap for us can be so very, very "expensive" for so many others. Don't cry out against others without a second thought, you are definitely among those "others". Help for a sustainable mining, for a sustainable resource management.

Μην πυροβολείτε τον Ορυκτό Πλούτο της Χώρας

What’s Mined Is Yours

Remember - if it cannot be grown, it has to be mined!

Πόσο "gorilla safe" είναι το κινητό μας;

Hightech trash... Dark Side of Digital Age

Τα ορυκτά μας ..πάνε, εμείς;

Μια ..ορυκτή μέρα, βήμα προς βήμα

[ο,τι κι αν σας πάρουν, μένουν τα όνειρα. Not mine(d), only yours..]

[by Dr.Tzeferis Peter][του Τζεφέρη Πέτρου]