Minerals At Work

Did You Know...

• That a family of 4 would use 3,375 lbs. of coal in one year to heat their electric water heater? Or that their range would require 560 lbs. of coal and their TV would require 256 lbs. in one year? That's because more than 50% of the electricity we use is generated by burning coal.
• There are 1,000 tons of recoverable coal for every man, woman and child in the United States. U.S. reserves are plentifuly enough to last the next 250 years!
• Over 50% of the electricity that powers our homes and businesses come from coal; more than all the energy resources combined
• Copper use in new U.S. family homes has risen by about 60% over the last ten years due to new technology. Mining may not be "dot com" activity, but it sure does support the exciting new technology
• The Internet uses approximately 8% of total U.S. electricity consumption; an amount equal to approximately 70 million tons of coal per year.
• Every year, 36,000,000 light bulbs are purchased, all made from tungsten, trona, silica sand, copper and aluminum.
• 50,000 lbs. of toothpaste (2.5 million tubes) are used (enough to fill a small jet liner) requiring calcium carbonate, zeolites, trona, clays, silica and fluorite.
• About 10 million passenger cars are made in the United States each year. Each car is made up of about 15,000 parts, all of which require natural resources to make. The average car weighs 3,000 lbs. Of that, 139 lbs. are aluminum, 28 lbs. are copper and 20 lbs. are zinc.
• A television requires 35 different minerals; 40 minerals are used to make telephones and 15 minerals go into making a car!
• Of the 50 states in the union, ALL of them mine something!
• Mining has touched less than one-quarter of one percent of all the land in the U.S.