Everything we use in our daily life contains some type of metal whether it is precious or a nonprecious metal such as gold or aluminum. All these metals that are used to produce our phones, computers, household appliances, etc come from mining.
Mining has many negative effects on the environment, mining is responsible for most air and water pollution and the destruction of whole landscapes. Many dangerous chemicals are used for the extraction of these metals nickel cyanide, mercury, and sulfuric acid which cause a lot of harm to the environment, animals, and people.
If we could replace the mining industry on earth to stop pollution we would have to move on to space. Asteroids which are located in every part of the universe are made up of ice rock and metals. Most of the asteroids in our solar system can be found in the Kuiper belt and in the asteroid belt.
Asteroids can contain precious metals such as gold and platinum and at the time can be worth trillions of dollars. Asteroids such as the 16 phase contain as much iron, nickel as the whole world would need for millions of years.
But asteroid mining comes with problems. As of right now, asteroid mining is just an idea. It would technically be too expensive to extract metals from asteroids; it would simply be better to continue mining on earth. Trillions of dollars worth of resources in space would cost even more to get them from space so technically it would be a loss. Maybe someday in the future humanity will be able to get resources from space so we can stop hurting our planet.
