The historical marker, near the Nevada-Arizona border, marks a gold mine, on federal land.
That pile of mining waste is farther away than you think. Its b i g .
If I could just dump all the electronics onto federal land, submit them to acids and fire, I'd leave less pollution, and since the land was owned by the government, I'd have no cleanup cost. Federal land mining by private metal companies bankrupted Superfund.
I admit that if we reform the General Mining Act of 1872 - which needs another "Historical Marker" - that the mining may move to rainforests in the southern hemisphere. But reform of GMA 1872 would also boost recycling stocks, and would cause Philippines, Indonesia, Malaysia and other "mining magnets" to change their own policies on metal mining.
The worst recycling is better than the best metal mining. Build your house next to here and drill a well for drinking water and see how it goes....
Here's another idea (thanks George Hinkle)...
Hopeful recycling for Africa in Ghana.
Sure we can do them both here at home.
But if mining is unleashed, why leash recycling? THAT'S OUR DOG IN THIS FIGHT. Hell, instead of outsourcing mining, what if we outsource our better activity, recycling? (My suggestion)
This is a company using reuse in Ghana to subsidize Ghana's e-waste recycling. Bad as in "good".
If I ran "Basel Action Network" or "Greenpeace" or "Natural Resources Defense Council", I'd notice that this MINING activity is visible from the highway... Hell, it's visible from OUTER SPACE. But a small recycling hut - even one with an Asian child pooched out on the scrap pile - would not be visible in this photo.
And which one, from this distance, would you be more worried about drinking from?
Answer: See USGS.gov
A promising way to direct such revenues is through a blockchain-based refundable deposit system. In this model, minerals extracted from public lands would be “tagged” at the point of production with a small, built-in deposit—funded by the reclaimed royalty stream—that remains associated with the product through its useful life. Blockchain smart contracts would record each unit (e.g., a solar panel, laptop, EV battery) and automatically pay a refund to whoever returns the item for certified reuse or recycling. This prevents fraud, reduces administrative overhead, and ensures transparency: every dollar of royalty-derived subsidy can be traced from the mine to the consumer to the recycler.
The system scales well across global repair networks, allowing technicians in Ghana, Mexico, or Appalachia to scan a panel or device and instantly receive the deposit as a micro-payment.
By linking resource extraction to resource recovery, this approach corrects a historic imbalance. For generations, extraction has been rewarded while circularity has struggled to compete economically with landfilling or informal dumping. Using lost royalties to fund deposits creates a price signal that makes reuse and recycling profitable, even in the most rural or under-resourced regions where formal recycling systems are thin. It also incentivizes manufacturers to design for repairability, because a robust return value on end-of-life devices makes durable, modular products more attractive.
For future generations, the benefits compound. Redirecting extraction subsidies into a transparent blockchain deposit system conserves minerals, reduces the need for new mining, and lowers the ecological footprint of manufacturing. It also builds the infrastructure—financial, digital, and logistical—for a regenerative materials economy, where products are tracked, returned, and recovered rather than abandoned or exported as unmonitored waste. Ultimately, turning 19th-century extraction rules into 21st-century circular-economy tools ensures that the value of America’s public mineral resources is not just taken from the land, but reinvested into leaving the land—and the global commons—better for the generations that follow.