Teaching Gold Miners to Work Without Mercury

Artisanal and small-scale gold mining is the largest single source of mercury emissions in the Philippines and worldwide, and it is driven by poverty rather than indifference: miners amalgamate ore with mercury because it is cheap, portable and understood. BAN Toxics was among the first Philippine organisations to work inside those communities rather than campaign at them, teaching enhanced gravity separation and pairing miners with peers who had already switched profitably — the persuasive fact being that the mercury-free method often yields more gold. Alongside the training it does the governance work: its 2019 study Illicit Mercury Flows and Governance Practices in Mindanao mapped how mercury actually reaches miners, it monitors illegal mercury sales including on social media marketplaces, and it convenes the National Coalition of Small-Scale Miners on setting an actual phase-out date, four years after the Philippines ratified the Minamata Convention with use still widespread.