Whether it's your bicycle or cellphone, life as you know it would not exist without minerals.
So, you're parking both the family car and the transit pass, biking to work instead and feeling a tad righteous about helping British Columbia wean itself from its dirty addiction to the mining industry and the minerals it extracts. Say thanks to a coal miner for the privilege. And don't forget the hardrock miner. Not to mention the smelter crew and the roughneck yanking pipe on some frigid drill rig.
Oh, and say thanks to the trucker hauling canisters of molybdenum, titanium or tungsten concentrate or the geologist staking gold, silver or rare earths deposits.
Without them and the industries that employ them, you'd be walking, not biking. Bicycles, unless you ride one you made yourself from bamboo, lashings of hemp and dried banana peels, is entirely manufactured from materials obtained by mining - steel processed by burning metallurgical coal, perhaps lightened by adding specialized metals like titanium; plastic and synthetic rubber obtained from petroleum products.
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