During the Second World War, a wag once remarked that the British Economy was like rubber, stretching itself in more and more directions to meet the efforts of arms production, food and all the other urgent requirements of the time. Economic historians record Herculean efforts at production. And equally ingenious efforts to scrimp, save and recycle to ensure that nothing useful was wasted. It was a long time ago, but could we still learn something from those days?
Britain’s Royal Mint thinks so. There job is to make all our coins, which they have been doing for hundreds of years. Some are made of gold ; and as they have astutely noted, the price of that metal has been soaring in recent years. Where to get more? Well something else has been soaring: the amount of high tech rubbish we all throw away so heedlessly. (not YOU, gentle reader: everyone else) Mobile phones, computers, entertainment systems of all kinds. Billions of items, thousands of tonnes. Well there may be a lot of gold in it, at concentrations higher than the ores processed by all those rugged manly chaps out in the mines and factories. And as Rebecca Morelle and Alison Francis report for the BBC the Royal Mint is now starting to mine it for gold, big time and turning the shiny stuff into lovely coins. How’s that for recycling. How’s that for a thoughtful use of resources in difficult times.
And the moral in all this? We in the LSS community (and the educated community more widely) are still members of the human family. It’s just that certain members of our family are highly unhappy, emotionally disturbed and not very nice. And this unhappiness comes out in things like drinking, violent emotional outbursts, riots, wars and things. But a family is a family. And the quieter sensible members get on because they have to. Inventing new technologies. Discovering new facts. Clearing up the mess. And we will continue to do so, until our day comes.
Question: How come Newsround had this in March and Big news didn’t get it until August? We don’t know either
[1]https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c6p2k11e41po
[2]https://www.bbc.co.uk/newsround/58971402
#gold #royal mint #recycling #waste #e waste
Learning, Science and Society 