Impacts of Extracting Metals

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Impacts of Extracting Metals

Advantages

  • Useful products can be made
  • Provides jobs and money to the local area
  • Health and Transport services can be provided
  • Buildings are cheaper because of the increased supply of materials
  • recycling metals saves money (in terms of energy)
  • recycling conserves resourses and cuts down on rubbish sent to landfil

Disadvantages

  • Mining and extracting metals uses a lot of energy
  • this energy comes from burning fossil fuels, which is non-renewable
  • burning fossil fuels can lead to acid rain, global dimming, and global warming
  • recycling metals only uses as small fraction of energy needed to mine and extract a new metal

Evaluation

No matter how many disadvantages, we still require metals, and the advantages only really work if we are careful with how energy is conserved and that we recycle as much unused metal as possible. The way we use and conserve energy also has to change, as one day the supply of fossil fuels will run out, so metals will have to be extracted in a different way.

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