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Money That Grows On Trees
parvez1 submits this piece about a process that uses plants to soak up and accumulate contaminants - and gold - from near gold-mining sites. Then the plants are harvested for their metal content. The plants aren't bio-engineered - he's taking advantage of the natural tendency for certain plants to accumulate heavy metals.
Not only do we have to worry about how much gold/heavy metals will be left in the plant, a much more important question is how this material will be extracted. I assume that to get rid of all the carbon, oxygen, hydrogen, and nitrogen that make up most of the plant, they would burn or heat the plant in some way, which could posssily contribute to pollution (since the Nitrogen containing compounds don't necesarily always go into Nitrogen gas). Also, since the plant is basically contaiminated with heavy metals, it really has no other side use, and so its only purpose will be for this mineral extraction. Is this profitable or feasible?