If We Said Sayonara to the Penny, the Earth Would Thank Us

If you’ve got pennies in your pocket and a way to melt down metal, you might want to go ahead and do that: the metal made to make them is worth more than the pennies themselves. One hundred pennies could get you $1.40 worth of zinc. Seems like a big waste of money, doesn’t it?

Furthermore, zinc mining is, as Eco Geek put it, “an environmental disaster”. From Eco Geek:

The demand for zinc, mostly due to growth in China, has skyrocketed, and wasting the metal on a coin that is, in general, a nuisance, is foolish economic and environmental policy.

Unfortunately, there’s no quick fix. Switching to the nickel as our cheapest unit is confusing, especially in places with uneven sales tax. Transactions would, according on a bill proposed by Representative Jim Kolbe (R - AR), be rounded to the nearest five cents. But people aren’t a big fan of paying more for a certain amount of stuff…even if it’s just cents.

If we did make the switch, it would only affect cash transactions; credit card purchases and interest payments would still be made to the penny. Many other countries have dropped their lowest coin without much trouble, but Americans would undoubtedly raise a ruckus about occasionally paying a few cents more than they would otherwise. This, regardless of the fact that most of our pennies are sitting in fountains, jars and between our couch cushions, and when we drop them, we rarely bother to pick them up. That’s America!

Link [Eco Geek]

Photo credit: Flickr user totalAldo