Now to the big question: when will the world run out of gold? Discoveries of untapped deposits are increasingly rare, leaving most gold production coming from older mines.
While there is no way to know exactly how much is left, the U.S. Geological Survey estimates that underground gold reserves amount to 55,115 tons. This means that roughly 20% of the planet’s total of the precious metal remains.
Gold reserves refer to deposits that are currently economically feasible to mine. These are different from gold resources, which could become economically feasible at some point in the future. While discoveries of new deposits, new mining technologies, and new needs for gold may change the timeframe, some experts estimate that we may run out of the precious metal in 20 to 40 years.
What Is Recycled Gold?
Since gold basically lasts forever, recycling offers promise for extending the available supply. In fact, recycling gold is quite a bit easier than mining new gold. Even if gold mines stop producing, the existing above-ground supply of the metal will keep circulating.
Recyclers can take gold in all sorts of forms — including coins, wedding rings, dental crowns, and even television parts — and melt it down to use in other applications.
When recycling gold from jewelry or coins, recyclers evaluate the gold’s purity using a special device and sort it by quality. Then, they melt the precious metal in a crucible at an extremely high temperature and pour it into a bar shape. The gold may undergo several more phases of refinement.
Unfortunately, however, some uses of gold make it more difficult to recycle. For example, the technology industry often uses the metal in such tiny quantities that it is too impractical (and expensive) to extract. In addition to removing the gold from its metal or plastic housing, recyclers must pass it through a chemical stripping procedure and further purification before they can use it again.
For that reason, most of the gold in these devices ends up in landfills. However, increasing awareness and new technological solutions hold some promise here too, as pioneering efforts to recycle gold from electronic scrap piles have already begun.
Does Gold Get More Expensive as Supplies Run Low?
Although recycling can extend the supply of how much gold is in the world economy, there is no denying that the global stock of unmined gold is decreasing. Some experts believe that humans may already have discovered all of the globe’s major gold deposits, meaning that each amount mined drops the planet’s remaining total.
As above-ground demand for gold grows alongside an awareness of declining supplies, the price will likely rise.
It’s difficult to predict exactly how much gold prices will surge in the face of depleted deposits. Furthermore, other factors affect gold prices, including geopolitical conflicts, inflation and deflation, environmental regulations, changes in gold reserves, and currency exchange.
Because the precious metal is bound by the laws of supply and demand, however, prices will almost certainly go up as the available supply of how much gold is in the world goes down.
Environmental Impact of Gold Mining
Several industries use gold in initiatives that may help the environment, such as solar cells, clean-energy fuel cells, and groundwater decontamination. On the other hand, gold mining poses a huge environmental hazard when not conducted responsibly:
- Cyanide heap leaching: An affordable but dirty way to extract gold, this method pollutes groundwater, surface water, and soils with the dangerous chemical cyanide.
- Open-pit mining: This mining technique causes profound changes to vegetation, soil, and bedrock, which destroys landscapes and harms ecosystems.
- Toxic waste dumping: Many gold mines release toxic waste directly into bodies of water like lakes, rivers, and oceans, which can harm wildlife and humans alike.
As concerns about the environmental costs of gold mining rise, countries have begun implementing tighter controls and stricter regulations. Sustainable operations like placer mining may become more attractive thanks to their small-scale and less invasive nature. Smart mining technologies may also improve resource management, including reducing waste and optimizing water and energy usage.