The extraction of rare minerals has doubled in the last 100 years

The extraction of minerals rare and scarce has doubled in the last 100 years, according to a Spanish investigation, which warns that “the extraction of chemical elements from the Land It can be constraining and carry environmental, economic, social and geopolitical risks”.

The work of the Center for Ecological Research and Forestry Applications of the Autonomous University of Barcelona (CREAF-UAB) and the Higher Council for Scientific Research of Spain, which publishes the journal Trends in Ecology and Evolution, is a bibliographical review that reveals that currently the 70% of the elements in the periodic table used by humans are not in biomass.

Researchers recall that nature makes do with a few elements from the periodic table, such as carbon, calcium, oxygen, hydrogen, nitrogen, phosphorus, silicon, sulfur, magnesium and potassium, enough for there to be, for example, trunks, leaves, hair or teeth

The study contrasts these elements with those needed to “build the world of humans, cities, medical devices, train tracks, planes, engines, computers or smartphones”, for which many more chemical elements are needed.

Thus, the study warns that the set of chemical elements that humans need (what is scientifically known as the human elementome) is increasingly diverging from that needed by nature (the biological elementome).

According to the work, in 1900 the elements used by humans came from 80% of biomass (wood, plants, food…), in 2005 this percentage was 32% and it is expected that in 2050 it will only be twenty%.

“We are going to a situation in which 80% of the elements we use are from non-biological sources”warn the scientists, who emphasize minerals or rare earths, which are scarce and often their reserves are located in a few countries.

According to the UAB professor and founder of CREAF, Jaume Terradas, these rare minerals “they must be obtained from geological sources, which implies extraction, commercialization between countries and the development of efficient recycling technologies, and their scarcity and location can cause social, economic, geopolitical and environmental conflicts”.

“Sustaining the human elementome will be increasingly complex and risky, it will have to be done in terms of environmental justice and, of course, with a more rational use of the Earth’s limited resources”according to Terradas.

The study reveals that the human elementome began to diverge from the biological elementome in the 1900s, associated with the continuous increase in the consumption of fossil fuels and metallic, industrial and construction materials.

“Humans have gone from using common materials such as clay, stone or lime, which are continuously recycled in nature and in the atmosphere, to using many other elements, including especially those known as ‘rare earths’”, Jordi Sardans, co-author of the study, commented.

According to the authors, using more elements from the periodic table means extracting more minerals, increasing energy consumption and associated CO2 emissions.

That is why they propose to put an end to planned obsolescence (planning policy or design of a product with an artificially limited useful life) and develop new technologies that favor a more profitable use of these scarce materials and that allow their widespread and efficient recycling and reuse.

(With information from EFE)