The beautiful and fatal appearance of gold

Who among us ordinary citizens has much to do with gold? It's more for kings, potentates and banks - or so it seems. But we all have more to do with gold than we think: gold is not only found in bars, but also in cell phones, PCs, TV remote controls... - and of course in teeth, rings on fingers, wristwatches and jewelry in general.

Gold has some special properties, which is why it is used in dental and electrical engineering. However, only around 10% of it is used. Most gold goes into jewelry, around 60%, and since the euro crisis at the latest, increasingly into investment gold, around 20%. This is actually understandable when people are talking about the insolvency of entire banks and even countries.
Gold is in itself an unproblematic (precious) metal. What is problematic, however, is the way in which gold is mined. And one can also ask why gold mining is needed at all.

For reasons of cost and profit, large-scale industrial mining involves open-cast mining and the use of cyanide.
The result: huge craters are created, sometimes hundreds of meters deep and kilometers long, which are virtually impossible to fill or restore. Even if they were, this would be a problem for the groundwater due to multitoxic reactions. And agriculture or other land use is definitely over.

Cyanide lye, made from the salt of hydrocyanic acid, dissolves even the smallest gold particles from the crushed rock. In the Peruvian Yanacocha mine, the largest gold mine in Latin America, gold is therefore extracted at a rate of up to 0.5 g per tonne of rock. Huge quantities of drinking water are turned into highly toxic waste water. People, animals and nature suffer as a result. They are poisoned or driven away by pressure or circumstances.

In so-called small-scale mining, e.g. mostly illegal in the Amazon region, the sand is rinsed out under trees along river courses with high-pressure sprayers, sieved, amalgamated with mercury, heated in bowls, the mercury evaporates and gold remains. At least this last step is simple and convenient. However, the mercury vapors are highly toxic. The consequences only become apparent later: cerebral disorders, miscarriages, deformities, skin rashes... Mercury residues are also absorbed through water and fish. Forests, even in indigenous and nature conservation areas, are being destroyed.

Initially, our demand for gold also controls the price, but this is set by five banks at the London gold price fixing, so far including Deutsche Bank and Paribas (incidentally, US agencies accuse the former of manipulating the price). Due to the high gold price and "low-cost" production, mining is worthwhile even if the gold content is low. An average of 0.8 g of gold per tonne of rock in Yanacocha contrasts with up to 30 g/t in the Alps. It is not mined here. We are effectively shifting the ecological and other risks and costs to Peru, China, the Congo, etc.
There are 8,000 tons of gold in private ownership in Germany, which is 5% of the world's gold reserves and more than twice as much as the gold reserves of the Bundesbank, the second largest state gold owner after the USA. Nobody actually needs gold in a safe or in jewelry to live (or survive). But my golden wedding ring alone, mined today in Yanacocha, would represent more than 14 tons (!) of toxic waste. A cell phone - for its low gold content of around 0.03 g alone - accounts for 140 to 200 kg of toxic waste.

• Because of the ecological and human rights issues involved, only the gold that remains in the ground is initially harmless.
• If gold should or must be used, alternative materials such as ceramics etc. can be tested first, otherwise recycled gold.
• In general, recycling needs to be stepped up - just think of the 110 million cell phones that lie unused in German drawers and the 10 million cell phones that end up in the trash every year in this country. Just 15 recycled cell phones, for example, replace a ton of rock (as well as cyanide and tons of drinking water) from the Yanacocha mine!
• Finally, investment gold should be taboo, both as physical gold and as certificates. In the meantime, thoughtful bankers are already realizing that gold (after the end of the fixed dollar-gold exchange rate of the Bretton Woods system in the 1970s) no longer has a function in the monetary system and therefore actually has a fictitious value.

It is worth thinking about recycling or alternatives to gold and reflecting on the "uselessness" of investment gold - and taking action. Even if the trade balance of the producing countries no longer shines so brightly: people and nature in the producing countries, and ultimately we too, will benefit.