The new gold mine? Mining waste with micro-organisms to extract metals

By Albert Van Santvoort, Business in Vancouver

There’s a new gold rush, with tailings ponds replacing riverbeds as a metal source for modern-day prospectors. 

Tailings – waste produced by mining operations – have until recently been considered waste, and an environmental liability that needed to be monitored and remediated. 

But academics and mining industry stakeholders are taking a closer look at the value that may be stored in the tailings ponds of B.C.-based mines.

Copper and gold, for example, make up the majority of the metals found in tailings, at 46 per cent and 21 percent, respectively. But this waste can also includes iron, nickel, coal and other metals, according to the International Council on Mining and Metals.