BAN Toxics believes that working with local communities, especially the most marginalized, is significant in achieving a toxics-free and environmentally just world. Through its work with indigenous communities in small-scale mining, BAN Toxics met Solomon Malaggay.
Solomon is a father of two and works as a farmer and a miner. He is a member of the Banao Tribe, in Kalinga, Cordillera Administrative Region, Philippines. One of the main livelihoods in this area is small-scale mining, where miners often use mercury, a highly toxic chemical, to separate the gold from ore.
BAN Toxics sought to promote the Gravity Concentration Method (GCM), a mercury-free process, to small-scale miners in Kalinga and conducted several seminars there. Solomon attended a series of BAN Toxics trainings that teach the mercury-free mining method.
Through the trainings, he started to understand the dangers of mercury and began supporting BAN Toxics’ advocacy. Solomon and some of his fellow tribespeople started transitioning to GCM.
He felt motivated to help protect his tribe, their environment and their way of life. He volunteered to work with BAN Toxics in advocating for the transition to toxics-free small-scale mining.
According to him, some of those miners who were taught GCM stopped attending the trainings. Solomon was well-versed in this mercury-free process, so these miners asked him to teach them the process again. After helping BAN Toxics re-train these miners, he eventually became one of the trainers of GCM.
BAN Toxics also conducted a communication seminar to help small-scale miners like Solomon become more effective trainers who can capacitate other miners. Today, he still continues to work with BAN Toxics as a Miner Expert Trainer.
Solomon considers BAN Toxics a great advocate of chemicals and waste management and supports its goal of eliminating mercury from small-scale mining. There are difficulties in promoting new small-scale mining processes in local communities, but he finds the work interesting.
He feels challenged whenever he gets to meet people from different walks of life because he learns a lot from them and he is also able to teach people better, safer methods of mining.
“Iyong [mga] dating sarado ang isip [sa pagbago ng pamamaraan ng pagproseso ng ginto] ay nakikisama na,” he said. (Translation: “Those who were closed to the idea of changing their method of processing gold started following the new mercury-free process.”)
Solomon and BAN Toxics continue to work with indigenous peoples and other small-scale mining communities in Camarines Norte and South Cotabato to promote mercury-free gold processing.
BAN Toxics is an independent non-government environmental organization that works for the advancement of environmental justice, health and sustainable development in the area of chemicals and wastes, with a special focus on women, children and other marginalized sectors. Mercury is a highly toxic heavy metal that can harm people’s health and the environment. BAN Toxics works with artisanal and small-scale gold mining (ASGM) communities to stop the use of mercury in ASGM.
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