As Indonesia ramps up its mining sector to feed the world’s hunger for zero-emission vehicles, it is faced with a problem: what to do with all the waste. Now, companies building the nation’s first factories to produce the elements that power electric vehicles are seeking permission to dump billions of tons of potentially toxic waste into the waters of the Coral Triangle, home to the highest diversity of corals and reef fishes anywhere on the planet.
Nickel mining, increasingly pushed to meet rising demand for batteries, has long been a core industry for Indonesia. Smelting for battery nickel produces large amounts of acidic waste full of heavy metals, and how to deal with the waste is one of the most important decisions in a smelting project. Fewer than 20 nickel mines around the world dispose of their waste into the sea, but the proposals in Indonesia indicate that the projects would become some of the world’s biggest in terms of production and waste.
Both the mineral mining industry and the scientific community agree there is a lack of adequate information on the impacts of mine-waste disposal in the deep sea, according to the most recent report from the Group of Experts on the Scientific Aspects of Marine Environmental Protection (GESAMP), a U.N. agency. Most of the known information about DSTD has historically been under the tight control of mining companies, according to the report.
Source: Mongabay
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