The Cycle Of An iPhone

Aluminium

Aluminium is extracted in an ore called bauxite. Bauxite is a sedimentary rock with a relatively high aluminium content. This is a red dirt and clay mixture rock commonly found in Australia, Brazil and India.

Since any aluminium that has been used up cannot be replaced in the same amount except it is being recycled and refined for other uses, then i believe it is non-renewable. A renewable energy resource is a resource that can be replaced or replenished naturally.

However despite all the wonders we can do with aluminium, there are some negative factors of aluminium too. For example when bauxite is extracted from the earth, the strip-mining process removes all native vegetation in the mining region resulting in a loss of habitat and food for local wildlife as well as significant soil erosion. Green house gasses have also been released during the smelting and processing, which compromises the air quality.

To prevent all these environmental issues aluminum can be substituted as a recyclable material rather than using bauxite ore, which is a rarer and less reusable item.

Iron

Iron is extracted from an Iron ore in a huge container called the blast furnace. Iron ores (such as hematite) contain Iron oxide. The oxygen must be removed from the Iron oxide in order to leave the Iron behind. Reactions in which oxygen is removed are called reduction reactions.

Australia and Brazil are among the worlds largest iron ore producers and hold a large portion of the worlds iron ore reserves. Australia makes up half of the world's iron ore exports.

Iron is non renewable because it cannot be naturally reproduced. Much of the ore found today developed nearly 1.8 billion years ago when the Earth.

Extracting iron from its ore can have huge impacts on our society, we can use iron to make many bigger and better things for example an iPhone. However Iron extraction has many negative impacts on our environment for example loss of landscapes due to the size of chemical plants needed, noise pollution, atmosphere pollution from the various stages of extraction for example ; Carbon monoxide, Carbon dioxide, sulfur dioxide (from the sulfur content of the ores) and disposal of slags.

Gold

The gold production mainly comes from five states – Nevada, Alaska, California, Colorado and South Dakota. However it is mainly mined in Nevada More than 74% of gold is mined from Nevada alone. Gold is used in consumer electronics because it is highly reluctant to corrosion and an excellent conductor of electricity.

Hard rock mining is the process of using open pit or underground mining tunnels to retrieve the gold from the rock. The Gold ore is finely crushed rock or earth containing trace amounts of Gold which are extracted using a chemical process. The most commonly used chemical for this process is Cyanide.

Non-renewable resources are environmental resources that cannot be replenished. Once they have been used up, there will be no more. Therefore, Gold is not a renewable resource. When we have mined all the existing gold from the Earth, there will be no more gold.

Some of the negative impacts that gold  mining can have on the environment include the loss of biodiversity, soil erosion, the contamination of surface water, and the formation of sinkholes.

Lithium

iPhone batteries use lithium-ion technology. Compared with older generations of battery technology, lithium-ion batteries charge faster, last longer, and have a higher power density for more battery life in a lighter package.

As of 2018, most of the world's lithium production is in Chile, where lithium-containing brine is extracted from underground pools and concentrated by solar evaporation. Chile's lithium is found in underground reservoirs of salty water. Miners have only to pump this valuable liquid to the surface. The liquid is pumped out and left to dry in the sun. The resulting material is made into lithium carbonate and then processed into just lithium.

One of the side effects of lithium mining is water pollution: the process of mining can affect local water supplies, potentially poisoning communities. The lithium carbonate extraction process harms the soil, and can cause air pollution. There are also concerns around how to recycle it.

Copper

There is approximately 6 grams of copper in an iPhone. Copper is typically extracted from oxide and sulfide ores that contain between 0.5 and 2.0% copper. Currently, about 80% of global copper production is extracted from sulfide sources. Regardless of the ore type, mined copper ore must first be concentrated to remove gangue or unwanted materials embedded in the ore.

Copper is not a non-renewable resource. Once our supplies of copper run out, we won't have any left.

Chile, the world's leading copper producer by far, produced an estimated 5.8 million metric tons of copper in 2017. In second place is Peru, with an estimated copper mine production of 2.4 million metric tons in 2018.

copper mining involves significant and usually permanent ecological impact. Constantly, the local biodiversity, surface water and groundwater are impacted. Land covers from forests to wetlands and from deserts to coral reefs are often seriously and possibly irreversibly degraded.