Review of publicly available academic, industry, and NGO research as well as first-hand personal accounts of the impacts of titanium mining and metal processing.

Summary

• Titanium is a unique metallic element in that 95% of its extraction is to create a compound (the pigment TiO2), rather than metal itself

• Due to titanium’s high affinity for oxygen and other elements, it is extremely complicated to process (and even machine) titanium into the metal with the properties it is known for (strong, lightweight, non-corrosive)

• The result is that while titanium is the 9th most abundant element in the earth’s crust, it is not widely used due to its high cost of production. The process is also generates a lot of waste, and consumes a lot of energy

• The mining impacts of titanium are less related to pollution and more related to land-use changes and energy consumption

• Displacement of people for the establishment of titanium mines is common, and there are many documented protests around the world against titanium mining

• While recycling of Ti metal could be a better alternative to mining (unfortunately there aren’t high-quality LCA studies available), some re-processing inevitably has to be done to produce high-quality titanium metal