A fascinating and unique mercury-free method for obtaining gold is being used in Manado, a town in North Sulawesi, Indonesia. It utilizes a natural organic product called ijuk, a thick, fibrous mat that grows beneath the fronds of sugar palm trees. Ijuk is tightly woven and well structured, and miners use to line their sluices, where the fibers of the mat provide an excellent surface to capture the heavy gold.
The ijuk fiber used in the Manado Method appears to provide the same function as a man-made product called miner’s moss. Miner’s moss is excellent at capturing fine gold, and we utilize it in the building schematics of our not-for-profit Popandson sluice, which can be found HERE. The fact that Indonesian artisanal miners have found a solution that costs no extra money, doesn’t harm their health and occurs in nature is an uplifting development in the push toward mercury-free gold processing.
