GoldPaq

When you think of ways to help the planet, reduce your carbon footprint, and “go green,” chances are selling your gold scrap for cash is probably the last thing that comes to mind. However, recycling gold by selling gold scrap is one of the easiest ? and most profitable ? ways that you can make an impact on the environment. Gold equals green in more ways than one.

The words reduce, reuse, and recycle most often conjure up images of the recycling bins many of us have outside our homes, filled with paper, plastic, glass, and aluminum cans. While it?s always a great idea to recycle these items, recycling gold is just as important, not to mention just as easy, if not easier.

We all know that filling our already-crowded landfills with more garbage is not a good idea. While gold rarely ends up in the landfill, it can be just as damaging to the environment.

Like all other precious natural resources, gold is found in the earth?s surface. And unlike the widely held belief that gold is panned from streams where gold reserves are found, very little viable gold is actually harvested in this manner. Instead, gold, like coal, diamonds, and other natural resources that are found in the earth?s crust, must be mined.

While gold miners of the 1800s may have been able to find rich seams of gold just waiting to be pick-axed from just below the earth?s surface, today?s methods of gold mining have little to do with pick-axes, and much more to do with explosives and chemicals that can be harmful to the environment.

In modern gold-mining operations, large open-pit mines are created by blasting holes in the earth?s surface, then excavating the resulting ore in which the gold is contained.

This ore is then pulverized into a fine powder which releases the gold. When combined with water, this ore creates a muddy mixture that is known as slurry. The slurry is then treated with chemical solvents that react with the slurry to extract the gold.

Unless you work in the gold-mining industry, you may be shocked to learn that the chemical solvent most often used to extract gold from ore is cyanide. Cyanide, as we all know, is an extremely toxic poison that is deadly even in small amounts.

While gold-mining operations both in the U.S. and throughout the world are aware of the inherent dangers of cyanide used to extract gold, and take strong precautions to prevent the cyanide from being released into the environment, no precaution is completely foolproof, or 100% capable of keeping any cyanide at all from making its way back into the environment. Unfortunately, some of this cyanide may find it?s way to the fish, wildlife, and vegetation surrounding gold mines, with devastating results.

As if the dangers of the cyanide used to extract gold from ore were not enough, the danger to the physical environment surrounding a goldmine is also of concern. Any time one blasts into the earth?s surface, the naturally occurring vegetation and wildlife that surrounds the mine site is disturbed. Although mining companies in U.S. are now required to reclaim mine sites and return them to as close to their original state as possible, this process takes years to complete, and, of course, cannot even begin until the seam of gold that is being mined is depleted.

Like any other mining operation, much of the environmental harm that results is incidental. The process of mining for gold requires a great deal of heavy machinery, all of which runs on electricity and/or fossil fuels. The greenhouse gases produced by this machinery have a detrimental effect on both the local air quality, and on the ozone.

By recycling gold, we can keep gold production from growing, and from creating lasting harm to our environment. Instead of letting old gold jewelry and gold scrap linger unused in our homes, we can put this gold back onto the market by recycling it, just as we do metal, glass, plastic, and paper.

When we sell our old gold jewelry and gold scrap, we allow existing gold that has already been taken from the earth?s surface to be reused, which decreases the demand for new gold production.

What?s more, recycling gold is one of the easiest, most profitable ways that we can reduce, reuse, and recycle. While recycling base metal, glass, paper, and plastic will usually result in nominal cash return for those who recycle, recycling gold is sure to result in a much higher profit margin, for much less effort on the part of those who recycle it.

Gold can equal green, both for the environment, and for those who turn their old gold scrap into another kind of green ? the green of the paper, cash variety!

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