A new approach to dealing with the dangers of tailings

Ed Pearcey

Fri, Jun 6, 2025, 6:53 AM 6 min read

Mining is a process that produces vast amounts of material, for which the industry is trying to find a sustainable – and profitable – use. Tailings production is an inherent part of mining and metals processing and will remain so for the foreseeable future.

There is also a serious safety concern inherent in the process, with tailings likely to be a dangerous source of toxic chemicals.

“I have seen estimates for global tailings production of around 14.5 billion tonnes a year, all of which must be stored safely for a significant amount of time – if not in perpetuity,” Simon Jowitt, director and state geologist of the Nevada Bureau of Mines and Geology, tells Mining Technology.

That amount is also unlikely to decrease at any time soon, “so the continued storage of this […] material, [which] is often challenging to keep safely, remains a major concern for the industry”.

Tailings can contain significant amounts of metals that either were ignored the first time around because of low demand for the metal at the time of mining (or a lack of consideration of potential extraction), or because of poor recovery.

“There are several efforts globally to characterise both legacy tailings (post-mining) and tailings at currently active mines for the extraction of critical and other metals. We are currently doing some of this work in Nevada, and I have also been involved in work assessing the potential of tailings and other mining waste for tellurium and other metal production,” Jowitt adds.

There are other potential uses for tailings from certain mineral deposits, such as carbon dioxide sequestration.

Emma Gagen, director, International Council on Mining and Metals (ICMM), tells Mining Technology that if not managed responsibly, "tailings pose environmental and societal risks”.

However, companies’ robust implementation of the Global Industry Standard on Tailings Management across sites “can help to support continual improvement in the safe, responsible and transparent management of tailings”.

She adds that reducing tailings is an “ambitious challenge that requires an integrated approach across most parts of the mining process”.

The ICMM published a Tailings Reduction Roadmap in 2022 to provide strategic direction to the mining and metals industry on how to accelerate the development and adoption of some of the most promising technologies to reduce tailings – including approaches such as reusing existing tailings for new purposes and products. This helps to reduce the volume being stored whilst creating additional value.

Moving beyond minerals and metals recovery, there are other opportunities to minimise the waste associated with tailings and turning them into something of real commercial use.