Barriers to implementing cleaner technologies and cleaner production (CP) practices in the mining industry: A case study of the Americas

In the Americas, years of unregulated mining and mineral processing activities have not come without high environmental costs. For decades, large volumes of untreated wastes have been discharged into surrounding air, waterbodies, and soils, and since the beginning of the environmental movement and the advent of the first environmental legislation some thirty years ago, only selected mines in this region have experienced noticeable reductions in pollution and achieved marked improvements in environmental management. These properties have been able to integrate a number of cleaner technologies and Cleaner production (CP) practices — defined here as highly efficient environmental equipment, and state-of-the-art environmental management measures — into a wide-range of operations. The remaining mines, however, face a number of barriers that either individually or collectively prevent implementation of cleaner technologies and CP practices. Using important regional examples, this paper provides an overview of these barriers, which have been identified as legislative, technologic, and economic in nature, and discusses the changes that are needed to overcome them. While ultimately, an environmental improvement is contingent upon what initiatives are taken at individual mines, for these barriers to be removed, and any realistic movement toward industrial CP to occur, regional governments must play an expanded environmental role and make CP an national goal. Once widespread governmental assistance has been provided, and mine employees completely understand the importance of environmental protection, cleaner technologies can then be more readily implemented, and CP plans that are procedurally simple can be sketched.