8 - Primary Industry

One thing I'd like to change about the mining industry is to decrease its impact on the natural environment.

HudBay already uses a pressure leach process, so there are no sulphur dioxide emissions in the zinc plant. But the smelter is still the number one polluting mine in Canada.

One of the biggest problems that engineers face now is how to make the industry sustainable. Energy is not going to get any cheaper to extract out of the ground, resources are not infinite and now we're realizing the impact our society has on our surroundings.

Coming up with solutions to this will require more creative and out of the box thinking.