Most people know very little about gold as it doesn't figure highly in the earth's useful elements. It is rare and it is incredibly stable. So, once mined, infinitesimal amounts are lost and finds its way back into the 'environment'.
- The entire world production of gold is roughly 1.5 million kg per year, which would form a cube around 4.3 metres on each side; and
- Experts estimate that some 10 billion troy ounces of gold have been produced in the history of humanity, or just over 311 million kg. That would be a cube roughly 25 metres on each side; and
- The largest ship ever built (the Seawise Giant, which was decommissioned in 2010 and was listed as having a cargo capacity of 657 million kg) could hold twice the amount of gold that the human race has ever produced, throughout all of history; and
- Experts estimate that something in the order of 2% has ever been lost to the environment.
Manufacturers using gold typically factor in this 2% into their production costs and in goldsmithing workshops, they make assiduous efforts to ensure that infinitesimal amounts are lost and unrecoverable. Typically, each and every worker maintains a 'lemel stock' – lemel being metal filings AKA precious scrap.Typically the outcome is that workers, through working processes, loose less than 2% of the gold that passes through their hands.
"In the business" anything more a 2% loss is regarded as gross inefficiency and ineptitude – and rightly so.
Compare and contrast alL this with 'textile waste'! Globally, around 92 million tonnes of textiles are sent to landfill each year. In Australia, a significant portion of clothing waste ends up in landfills, with recent figures showing over 200,000 tonnes discarded annually, according to Seamless Australia. This represents a substantial environmental problem, as textile waste contributes to greenhouse gas
emissions, water pollution, and land degradation.
It is interesting bto note that the City of Launceston's WASTE MANAGEMENT CENTRE estimates that approx. 10% of the WASTEstream that flows into its LANDfill is textiles ... Circa 2023.
Compared to the GOLDstandard where all but infinitesimal amounts of material resources are ONcycled, the MINDset shift needed to have such a standard seen as typical seems a long way off as functionaries in 'public service' dodge the issue in deference to the status quo and their risk adversity towards their incomes etc.
It is clear that the schism between the aspirations of governance's functionaries and the governed's expectations and desires is a yawning gap. More to the point it is an unaffordable gap between what is and what should be given the growing evidence that in every aspect of resource management humanity needs to lift its game. Alternatively, as David Susukie SAID, "The future doesn't exist. The only thing that exists is now and our memory of what happened in the past. But because we invented the idea of a future, we're the only animal that realized we can affect the future by what we do today."
If humanity actually foresees a future not so much for what we might imagine as an immediate 'future' but something to be enjoyed by our grandchildren's grandchildren, then at a local level and in the here and now we all need to pay close attention to resource recovery and how it is implemented.
Indeed we need to pay close attention to the GOLDstandard, or move aside and make way for the insects to occupy the spaces humanity is despoiling.
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