Megan Fuerst is a sophomore at Ohio State University, and last year’s runner-up for Project Green Challenge, a 30-day eco-lifestyle initiative for students globally. Megan is majoring in Environment, Economy, Development and Sustainability with a concentration in Policy Analysis. She hopes to use this degree to help the re-legalization of industrial hemp in the U.S. and to create more environmentally-friendly policies among major corporations.
I grew up in Chardon, Ohio, surrounded by the Holden Arboretum. As a child, this meant I had acres and acres of woods, rivers and fields to explore. I was raised to love the outdoors and everything Mother Nature had to offer. However, it wasn’t until participating in Project Green Challenge 2013 during my freshman year of college that I learned the many ways my beloved Mother Nature was in danger and how my lifestyle was only adding to her decline.
Last year I was a freshman at Ohio State University, one of the largest universities in the country, undeclared in a major and feeling lost. I decided to join a few clubs on campus in order to meet people, most importantly the Students For Recycling club. As it turned out, joining this particular club, where I am now the webmaster, was the single best decision of my life, because it introduced me to Project Green Challenge (PGC) and Teens Turning Green. PGC is a 30-day eco lifestyle competition during the month of October. Each day has a unique, sustainability-related theme, with awesome prizes everyday, as well as an incredible grand prize worth more than $12,000.
By the end of the first day of PGC, I was hooked. After just one day I had learned more that I had ever imagined! Day 1 was the “body” challenge, and I realized that I had never actually thought about what I was putting onto and into my body. That was all the wake-up call I needed. After watching Annie Leonard’s Story on Cosmetics [watch below] I couldn’t understand how people could just buy any product without even wondering about the ingredients. At the same time, I knew that I was just as guilty as the next person. This made me eager to, first, buy new products, and second, to inform the world about this cycle of consumerism and big business.
Throughout the month, I learned more about the three major components of being green (reduce, recycle and reuse) in more depth than I ever thought possible. Reducing involved more than simply not throwing away as much stuff. It included conserving water, watching my meat intake to reduce agricultural farm waste and pollution, and not buying into hot new items. I understood the importance of reusing and instantly worked towards eliminating plastics from my life, especially plastic bags while grocery shopping. Finally, PGC taught me that recycling is more than just throwing my plastic water bottles in the blue bin rather than the black one. I discovered the term “upcycle” and I learned how to work toward a life of zero waste.
The beauty of PGC is that it works. It helped me find my perfect path in life, and gave me all the resources and motivation I needed to move forward in the sustainability movement. I went from being lost and uncertain to declaring a major with absolute commitment in just one month. Most importantly, Project Green Challenge made sure to emphasize the importance of spreading the word. What good is all this knowledge if I can’t share it and create change with it? I gained a newfound confidence through PGC because I had this awesome team of eco-superstars supporting me.
PGC is a lot of work. But, you soon discover that the work is worth it! Teens Turning Green has exceptional incentives to keep students motivated. By doing well on a challenge, you could receive an incredible package full of eco-products such as body care items, stainless steel water bottles, food, reusable containers and more. I even got a yoga mat as a prize one day! Every action is rewarded, and the result is a large team of newfound activists.
I was lucky enough to be a finalist and was flown out to the PGC Finals, a three-day eco-summit in San Francisco at the end of November. It was the experience of a lifetime. I listened to amazing speakers talk about their contributions to the world of sustainability, ate fresh, local and organic meals, modeled ethically produced clothing and created my very own perfume from organic oils. The summit ended with presentations from the finalists, and I couldn’t believe my ears when I was named the PGC 2013 Runner-Up. It has led to a whole new chapter of beautiful experiences.
At its core, PGC has one major goal, and that is to create positive change for our planet. This change might take place in your own life, your school or your community, but one thing is certain: you will not come out the same person you were when you started. You will become more informed and conscious, ready to take on the world and set out to fix every problem you encounter. For me, PGC was the start to a life of purpose, responsibility and activism. Sign up for this year’s challenge and I’m willing to bet it will do the same for you.
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Though made in large part of plastic, glass, ceramics, gold and copper, they also contain critical resources. The gallium used for LEDs and the camera flash, the tantalum in capacitors and indium that powers the display were all pulled from the ground — at a price for nature and people.
"Mining raw materials is always problematic, both with regard to human rights and ecology," said Melanie Müller, raw materials expert of the German think tank SWP. "Their production process is pretty toxic."
The gallium and indium in many phones comes from China or South Korea, the tantalum from the Democratic Republic of Congo or Rwanda. All in, such materials comprise less than ten grams of a phone's weight. But these grams finance an international mining industry that causes radioactive earth dumps, poisoned groundwater and Indigenous population displacement.
Environmental Damage: 'Nature Has Been Overexploited'
The problem is that modern technologies don't work without what are known as critical raw materials. Collectively, solar panels, drones, 3D printers and smartphone contain as many as 30 of these different elements sourced from around the globe. A prime example is lithium from Chile, which is essential in the manufacture of batteries for electric vehicles.
"No one, not even within the industry, would deny that mining lithium causes enormous environmental damage," Müller explained, in reference to the artificial lakes companies create when flushing the metal out of underground brine reservoirs. "The process uses vast amounts of water, so you end up with these huge flooded areas where the lithium settles."
This means of extraction results in the destruction and contamination of the natural water system. Unique plants and animals lose access to groundwater and watering holes. There have also been reports of freshwater becoming salinated due to extensive acidic waste water during lithium mining.
But lithium is not the only raw material that causes damage. Securing just one ton of rare earth elements produces 2,000 tons of toxic waste, and has devastated large regions of China, said Günther Hilpert, head of the Asia Research Division of the German think tank SWP.
He says companies there have adopted a process of spraying acid over the mining areas in order to separate the rare earths from other ores, and that mined areas are often abandoned after excavation.
"They are no longer viable for agricultural use," Hilpert said. "Nature has been overexploited."
China is not the only country with low environmental mining standards and poor resource governance. In Madagascar, for example, a thriving illegal gem and metal mining sector has been linked to rainforest depletion and destruction of natural lemur habitats.
States like Madagascar, Rwanda and the DRC score poorly on the Environmental Performance Index that ranks 180 countries for their effort on factors including conservation, air quality, waste management and emissions. Environmentalists are therefore particularly concerned that these countries are mining highly toxic materials like beryllium, tantalum and cobalt.
But it is not only nature that suffers from the extraction of high-demand critical raw materials.
"It is a dirty, toxic, partly radioactive industry," Hilpert said. "China, for example, has never really cared about human rights when it comes to achieving production targets."
Dirty, Toxic, Radioactive: Working in the Mining Sector
One of the most extreme examples is Baotou, a Chinese city in Inner Mongolia, where rare earth mining poisoned surrounding farms and nearby villages, causing thousands of people to leave the area.
In 2012, The Guardian described a toxic lake created in conjunction with rare earth mining as "a murky expanse of water, in which no fish or algae can survive. The shore is coated with a black crust, so thick you can walk on it. Into this huge, 10 sq km tailings pond nearby factories discharge water loaded with chemicals used to process the 17 most sought after minerals in the world."
Local residents reported health issues including aching legs, diabetes, osteoporosis and chest problems, The Guardian wrote.
South Africa has also been held up for turning a blind eye to the health impacts of mining.
"The platinum sector in South Africa has been criticized for performing very poorly on human rights — even within the raw materials sector," Müller said.
In 2012, security forces killed 34 miners who had been protesting poor working conditions and low wages at a mine owned by the British company Lonmin. What became known as the "Marikana massacre" triggered several spontaneous strikes across the country's mining sector.
Müller says miners can still face exposure to acid drainage — a frequent byproduct of platinum mining — that can cause chemical burns and severe lung damage. Though this can be prevented by a careful waste system.
Some progress was made in 2016 when the South African government announced plans to make mining companies pay $800 million (€679 million) for recycling acid mine water. But they didn't all comply. In 2020, activists sued Australian-owned mining company Mintails and the government to cover the cost of environmental cleanup.
Another massive issue around mining is water consumption. Since the extraction of critical raw materials is very water intensive, drought prone countries such as South Africa, have witnessed an increase in conflicts over supply.
For years, industry, government and the South African public debated – without a clear agreement – whether companies should get privileged access to water and how much the population may suffer from shortages.
Mining in Brazil: Replacing Nature, People, Land Rights
Beyond the direct health and environmental impact of mining toxic substances, quarrying critical raw materials destroys livelihoods, as developments in Brazil demonstrate.
"Brazil is the major worldwide niobium producer and reserves in [the state of] Minas Gerais would last more than 200 years [at the current rate of demand]," said Juliana Siqueira-Gay, environmental engineer and Ph.D. student at the University of São Paulo.
While the overall number of niobium mining requests is stagnating, the share of claims for Indigenous land has skyrocketed from 3 to 36 percent within one year. If granted, 23 percent of the Amazon forest and the homeland of 222 Indigenous groups could fall victim to deforestation in the name of mining, a study by Siqueira-Gay finds.
In early 2020, Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro signed a bill which would allow corporations to develop areas populated by Indigenous communities in the future. The law has not yet entered into force, but "this policy could have long-lasting negative effects on Brazil's socio-biodiversity," said Siqueira-Gay.
One example are the niobium reserves in Seis Lagos, in Brazil's northeast, which could be quarried to build electrolytic capacitors for smartphones.
"They overlap the Balaio Indigenous land and it would cause major impacts in Indigenous communities by clearing forests responsible for providing food, raw materials and regulating the local climate," Siqueira-Gay explained.
She says scientific good practice guidelines offer a blueprint for sustainable mining that adheres to human rights and protects forests. Quarries in South America — and especially Brazil — funded by multilaterial banks like the International Finance Corporation of the World Bank Group have to follow these guidelines, Siqueira-Gay said.
They force companies to develop sustainable water supply, minimize acid exposure and re-vegetate mined surfaces. "First, negative impacts must be avoided, then minimized and at last compensated — not the other way around."
Reposted with permission from DW.