The Bad Old Days

Mankind has not always kept its house clean. Old mining operations frequently dumped wastes with no concern at all for their chemical or physical stability or used milling and smelting techniques that released pollutants into the atmosphere, rivers and lakes. Some gola ores, for instance, used to be roasted. These were heated until sulphur and arsenic in the ores were driven off as gases, which were thrown out directly into the atmosphere. Another technique, the amalgamation process, used mercury to extract gold from the ore. The mercury was afterwards boiled off, leaving the gold behind. This process released mercury – which is one of the most environmentally hazardous of all the metals - into the .atmosphere and often let it enters soil or water through spills. The badly controlled burning of fossil fuels used to run mills and fire smelters also took its toll on the environment.

As people have begun to realize that polluted environments are hostile and unproductive ones, environmental controls have become much stricter, and governments have taken a role in making sure that industries don't make the mess they at one time did. Most industrializad countries have regulations governing air emissions, effluent discharges to watercourses and the disposal of solid wastes. Many countries which are less-developed, even though they sometimes feel themselves faced with a choice between economic growth and a safe environment, they are adopting stricter regulations too.

Both stricter regulations and the knowledge that environmental responsibility serves everyone's interests have prompted mining companies to develop their own codes of practice to make sure that mining operations do not significantly harm the areas surrounding them. Their goal is to adhere to these standards both at home and abroad.