Copper boom pushes miners to ‘holy grail’: Trillions of dollars of waste – Sydney Morning Herald

Over the past decade, 43 million tonnes of copper have been mined but never processed. Instead, the metal lies trapped in giant piles of waste rock next to dozens of mines from Chile to Australia.
That lost copper — too difficult to extract using conventional mining methods — could ease a looming shortage of the metal thats sent prices to the highest on record. Startup Jetti Resources said it has the technology to release that stranded metal, which is set to grow more than fivefold by 2050, according…

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