Think about how much metal you use in your life. Your phone. Your canned drinks. Your car.

Well, for every ounce of metal in our lives, there are several ounces of often-toxic sludge left behind from the extraction process at the mine. In other words, in a car there might be a ton of aluminum, and to get that aluminum for that one car, there’s enough red mud--the industry term for the waste product of mining--to fill a swimming pool. In fact, our metal mining produces such huge volumes of these so-called tailings ponds at mining sites that there’s enough of it to cover all of California in a foot-deep pool of sludge.

Sure, plastic straws may get the attention, producing tens of thousands of tons of waste per year. But the mining industry produces tens of billions of tons of hazardous waste each year.

Now, these days if you follow the sustainable food world you hear a lot about upcycling in the food industry. We’ve even featured companies on this podcast using agricultural byproducts to make new and valuable goods. So, two young students thought, why not do the same with tailings ponds at mining sites?