5 ms·
At first I thought “Isn’t copper really rare, surely there isn’t enough copper to plate all of the door knobs and other surfaces of the worlds hospitals.” As i
by npo9 7y ago
At first I thought “Isn’t copper really rare, surely there isn’t enough copper to plate all of the door knobs and other surfaces of the worlds hospitals.”
As it turns out we’ve only mined 12% of known copper reserves and once mined copper stays in circulation almost indefinitely because of it’s very high recycle rate.
Can we extract this wealth of materials cost effectively while respecting the ecosystems adjacent to them? What would a high-tech mine look like?
- stopads 7y agoOpen pit copper mines are one of the most horrible environmental extractions imaginable. I grew up next to one, it was pretty unpleasant. Not quite as nasty as uranium mining, but it's getting up there.
- code_duck 7y agoCopper is about $2.75 a pound currently. That's about 300% the price of aluminum and .3% the price of platinum.
- BoiledCabbage 7y agoAnd compare that 1 time cost, to the cost of all the practices, drugs, procedures they have the continuously perform to combat anti-biotic resistant bacteria? $2.75 is what, equal to maybe 2 mins of the average doctor's hourly salary?
- tbihl 7y agoCertainly not. Maybe a GP in a lower-paid practice, but NPs and PAs regularly make $60/hr ($1/min) across increasingly many specialties, to say nothing of MDs