Britain's Dirty Money ; This Vast Hole in the Ground, Visible From Space, Is the World's Biggest Copper Mine T Supplies the Royal Mint, but Is Also Responsible for Inflicting Shocking Environmental Damage and Poisoning the Local Population. Dan Mcdougall Investigates How the Loose Change in Our Pockets Is Costing Us the Earth

Summary

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The flatbed Iveco juggernauts streak relentlessly along the rain- soaked M4 in the late winter darkness. Speeding out across Ail Groesfan Hafren, the second Severn Bridge, the transporters cross the flat estuarial mud of the river in flashing red-light convoy and plough headlong into the Vale of Glamorgan.

Inside the cavernous trailers are giant loops of steel, copper and nickel folded like fragile origami paper into tight manageable bundles. Purchased to order from clients operating on the open market of the London Metal Exchange, the minerals have travelled thousands of miles from mines deep within Africa, South America and Australasia. The final destination for the cargo is a drab 30-acre industrial plot that few people outside South Wales even know exists. Here, in the early hours of the morning, the metals will be unloaded. The giant coils of steel and copper are unrolled like a carpet and 'blanked', or punched, into tens of thousands of small discs. The blanks are then plated with thick layers of nickel, washed in acid solutions and scanned by sensors. Dye stamps squeeze 'effigies' - the head and tail images - into the blanks, turning them into coins.

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Extract

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Britain's Dirty Money ; This Vast Hole in the Ground, Visible From Space, Is the World's Biggest Copper Mine T Supplies the Royal Mint, but Is Also Responsible for Inflicting Shocking Environmental Damage and Poisoning the Local Population. Dan Mcdougall Investigates How the Loose Change in Our Pockets Is Costing Us the Earth

Twenty-four tons of coins a year emerge from the heavily guarded coining press room of the Royal Mint, the world's oldest financial institution. Here, an entire range of industrial skills are housed on one massive plot, from furnace workers to engravers touching up the Queen's portrait. And at the end of it all is a football-pitch- sized warehouse full of money piled as high as a five-storey house.

The Royal Mint is a multimillion-pound business that produces three billion coins a year for the world; its complex inner workings remain a mystery to most of us. The same can be said for the true origins of the coins they produce in the dead of night.

Live has travelled to opposite corners of the world in search of the copper and nickel that make up the largest part of our coins. What we have discovered is that while as consumers we are obsessed with recycling, ethically sourced products and organic food, the very cash with which we do our trade is itself most likely unethical. Dirty money, ...

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