LME seeks to boost electronic trading, reassure physical users
The measures attempt to navigate a recurring tension between traditional physical users and the financial community which prefers electronic trading.
Today we care more and more about sustainability and yet we seem to know less and less about the materials that contribute to a sustainable future.
Making sustainable choices should be easy. The Nickel Institute’s new publication, Nickel in Society, highlights the most important applications of nickel, of which there are over 300,000, and explores how these applications contribute to innovation and sustainability in our daily lives.
Living Comfortably – 60% of all nickel is used to make stainless steel. If you look around you, there will be countless examples of how this beautiful, strong and flexible material helps to improve the quality of your life, every single day.
Eating and Drinking – Metals are natural components of the Earth’s crust: to a small extent they enter our bodies via food, drinking water and air. Nickel is one of them. But also, nickel in stainless steel makes the production, the preparation and the consumption of food and drinks safe, easy and pleasurable.
Staying Healthy – Throughout the 20th century, life expectancy steadily increased. We now live far longer than our predecessors for many different reasons, but mainly because there have been huge advances in the technologies that keep us healthy – more effective medicines, cleaner water, new technologies and better surgical tools. The best and cleanest surgical materials and equipment are essential – and many of them involve nickel. If you hear a doctor or surgeon talk about ‘surgical stainless steel’, you can be sure that it has nickel in it!
Communicating – Nickel plays several different roles in technologies that have revolutionised the way in which humans communicate. Mobile phones, laptops, handheld devices and other wireless gadgets continue to appear on the market in faster and savvier models and continue to modernise our lives. All this technology makes our daily lives more efficient and enables us to communicate instantly with someone in the building next-door or halfway across the globe.
Moving Around – We live in a world that never stops. And nickel plays a role in many of our key modes of transportation. Be it nickel alloys in the batteries of hybrid cars or in the turbines of jet engines, or nickel-containing stainless steel in passenger trains and subways, nickel is a crucial element enabling us all to get from place to place.
Driving Industry – Nickel’s unique combination of properties allows industry to do things it otherwise couldn’t do. Nickel helps industry remain productive and profitable, even in extreme environments. At the same time, nickel provides the properties to enable innovation, helping to advance the goals of sustainable production and consumption.
Enabling Clean Energy – Global warming is one of the major challenges facing the world today. In recent years, we have seen initiatives to curb carbon emissions by developing renewable energy sources. Nickel and nickel alloys play a crucial role in the production of renewable energy – enabling clean power to be a central part of our effort to tackle global warming.
Promoting Sustainable Development – The production and use of nickel supports quality employment and generates wealth on six of the world’s continents.At the same time, the state of knowledge about nickel in relation to human health and the environment has never been higher, and neither has the industry’s commitment to the management of nickel throughout its life cycle.
Nickel in Society provides politicians, regulators, journalists and the general public with the necessary information to make informed choices – whether it is a green procurement decision, a specification for a construction project, or shopping for your family.
To request a copy, click here.
