Ethics & Sustainable development in Mining activities – How Can we produce Renewable energy without damaging our ecosystems

Chuquicamata – The biggest open pit Copper mine in the world

At BUTOR CAPITAL, Justin ETTY and his team, advised by a group of independant experts (geologist, mechanical engineers, economists, environmentalist …..), are currently doing a brainstorming on Copper production.

Copper is becoming a strategic mineral, taking more and more place with the increasing interest of renewable Energy.

Copper is used in electric batteries manufacturing. No Electric energy without Copper. It is also used in pipes to transport water and electricity, electric wires, circuit boards and so on.  The more we want to move towards industrialisation the more we need copper.

Copper with tin, give bronze which is a very resistant material, copper with zinc give brass, copper with aluminium give cuproaluminium….. ; all those alloys are very useful in the industry.

The biggest copper mine in the world is called Chuquicamata ; it is located in Chile. Chuquicamata mine is operating since 1915. It produces annually around 700.000 tons of copper ; oxide and sulphide copper. The grade of this reserve is around 2%, which is a good grade for existing reserves. This mine provide 10% of the Chile annual production of Copper. Chile produces one third of annual world copper production.

To date the biggest operating copper mines  in Africa are  located in DRC and in Zambia ; with an annual producing of about 170.00O tons for the biggest one in DRC. We have also Kansanshi Mine In Solwesi (Zambia) which is the biggest open pit deposit in Africa but producing  around 146 000 tons of copper per year to date.

The african Copperbelt is said to be the second biggest deposit after the one of Chile. It goes across countries like DRC, Zambia, Botswana and Zimbabwe. It represents one third of Chile deposit.

This huge deposit of copper is said to have enough ressource to provide copper for human needs for generations. The challenge is how to sustainably extract this ressource, important for our current needs without damaging the environment and our ecosystems.  We are working with our experts focusing on this challenge and trying to solve this dilemma. It is good to produce renewable energy, and reduce fossil energy in our energy mix ; but how can we do it in a more ethic way, and without compromising our population health and future resources !