Red earth as far as the eye can see. Only on the horizon can it be seen that it is not a piece of Mars. The edge of the Amazon rainforest can be seen there. But what lies beneath your feet is so useful and valuable that the forest had to give way. At least for the moment. Before it is reforested, the patch belongs to excavators, trucks and other machines. Little by little, they dig into the ground where, 15 meters deep, the material they want to get is stored: bauxite, the raw material for aluminum, without which humans can hardly survive today. More than 70 million tonnes of the sought-after metal are produced worldwide every year, which requires around four times the amount of bauxite.
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