“If not you then who? If not now, when?” - Hillel the Elder, 1st century scholar

At the Procemin 2023 conference, I prefaced my presentation with the following sentence:

“Public perception of the massive sulphide mining industry”

And then continued with…

“Last week was the SAG conference in Vancouver. I missed it as my betterhalf took be on a cruise to Alaska. It was great! Getting back into town, I was nevertheless able to sit down with a couple of former colleagues to discuss, over a meal and brew, different developments in comminution, flotation, wear, breakage testing and the like when the topic of perception of the mining industry was raised. Afterall, we all promote our industry to our families, friends and the public as forward thinking, efficiency conscious, innovative and environmentally sensitive. But this is still not helping how the public sees the mining industry. In Canada, there are discussions that the mining industry should no longer be called mining, but a more environmentally sensitive name should be found. To this, I point to Shakespeare’s: “a rose by any other name, smells as sweet” and suggest that maybe “mining, by any other name, will still be perceived as not that environmentally sensitive”.

And that is how the public sees our industry, not by our achievements in efficiency and innovation but rather by what we leave behind for generations.

And then I continued with my presentation (Potential impact of electrochemical tailing processing on the worldwide value of Cu and Au production). It was well received, and I had the opportunity to field a few good questions.

But the highlight of that presentation actually occurred the following day at lunch.

I sat down at a table that was only partially occupied, but once seated, and looking up from my plate, I found myself amongst a table full of young adults. Youngs adults that I was soon to find out were mostly undergraduate students in mining from the University of Chile and some of which sat in on my presentation.

They were curious and asked questions related to the paper and to my evolution from academia into industry. They also shared their areas of interest and research which included tailings management, modelling and simulation, crushing and grinding. The future is undoubtedly bright for the Chilean mining industry!

But it was a question from a student related to the perception of the mining industry that got me thinking.

The student mentioned that they had a good friend studying mechanical engineering. This ME student questioned the motivation of studying mining engineering and mineral processing. In the ME student’s opinion, mining is a dirty industry with a negative effect on the environment and they should consider changing engineering disciplines. The student asked “what do I say to the ME friend of mine?”

Thinking back on my answer, it was a bit convoluted and a bit vague really. I talked about the importance to underline the mining and mineral processing needs people from many fields to address the challenges that we have. However, later in the evening, I realized that the best answer to this student in their relationship to mining skeptical ME friend would be “if not you, then who?”.

Mining and mineral processing has a lot of challenges that need addressing. We are indeed succeeding in some and still wanting in many others. If there is an industry that needs help in bringing people to meet its challenges, especially those related to its current legacy, it is indeed the mining industry.

So, if there is a rallying call for the recruitment of motivated and passionate students and their intellectual capital to meet and vanquish the challenges and legacy of the mining industry, it may indeed be:

“if not you, then who? If not now, when?”