Stephani Stephenson on mon 26 sep 11
Something interesting I heard in a conversation the other day with my
miner/neighbor, regarding a mine a couple of mountain ranges over, and
it's byproducts. At "Freeport-McMoRan Copper & Gold " ,copper and
molybdenum bearing ore is mined and processed. They produce up to 200
million pounds of copper and, as a by-product, 35 million pounds of
molybdenum annually.=3D20
This is no tiny mine. It stretches from one end of the horizon to the ot=
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her
and has grown massively in altitude as well as girth since i have watched=
=3D
it
the last 18 years when i go to visit my ma.=3D20
the mine use to be Asarco ,then Phelps Dodge. Now the mine is owned by a
Mexican conglomerate. At the tip end of another mountain range, the love=
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ly
sky Island Santa Rita's, another , and i might add hotly contested mine =
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(on
forest service land) is trying to get the go ahead, by a Canadian owned c=
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ompany.
my neighbor says that the Freeport -McMoRan mine processes and extracts
many other minerals besides Copper and Moly, including Uranium.
the most interesting thing he said, and this is the part that relates to
ceramics, is that they
sell and ship some sort of extracted processed mineral sludge or byprodu=
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ct
to Germany, where it is used to produce a very expensive glazed brick.=3D20=
=3D
i don't know whether it is for the glaze or for some sort of self glazi=
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ng
or salt glazed brick, but my first thought is , hmmmm, it obviously is co=
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st
effective for a German company to ship this stuff all the way over the se=
=3D
a
and across the continent. wonder why an American company is not getting t=
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he
'value added' value from making this glazed brick product? Also it seems =
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to
me that Germany's environmental regulations must be at least as stringent=
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as
ours (whether you agree that ours are stringent or not. that isn't a
question i want to get into on this forum.).
The thought was, here's a raw material byproduct that produces a high end=
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by
product. In this case though, both the ownership and the final product
production are with other countries . We get a piece of the middle. we g=
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et
a few jobs out of it, the company throws some money at charities, for goo=
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d
,but also to keep their name in a favorable light , and , i am not so sur=
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e
about the tax revenue, that's probably a convoluted knot .
Seems like we are missing out on the front and and the back end as well.
I get a newsletter from the tile and flooring industry , which of course,=
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is
a far cry from what i do in my studio, but it is interesting. Right now t=
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hey
seem to be excited about
the recently announced winners of the Federal Jobs and Innovation
Accelerator Challenge, a multi-agency competition launched in May to supp=
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ort
the advancement of 20 high-growth, regional industry clusters. the=3D20
proposals were submitted by regional public/private groups and vary quit=
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e a
bit.
There is a real move in that industry to start using more recycled produc=
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ts,
to aim for energy efficiency in production, and to of course, ultimately=
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,to revive the industry and to get customers back. And all builders are=
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after those LEED points.=3D20
so , building on what Dale said, i do think there is initiative to try an=
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d
connect the dots..
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