mining operation has ceased. Prior to any mining, an assessment is also necessary to analyze the potential environmental impacts. Another measure taken is that an environmental management program must be produced to show how the mine will operate. Land planning is an important aspect in deciding whether a site is suitable for mining but some environmental degradation is inevitable. Environmental Geology continues to lower the amount of negative effects that mining has on the natural environment. Recycling Nonrenewable resources are only one type of resource with the other two being potentially renewable and perpetual. Nonrenewable resources, such as fossil fuels and metals, are finite, and therefore cannot be replenished during human lifetime, but are being depleted at a high rate. Due to their importance in many economies, this creates an issue as the world keeps developing the technologies used to exploit these resources. Some important roles of these nonrenewable resources are to heat homes, fuel cars, and build infrastructure. Environmental geology has been used to approach this issue with the sustainable development of recycling and reusing. Recycling is the process of collecting recyclable consumer and industrial materials and products and then sorting them so they can be processed into raw materials with the intention of then using the raw materials to create new products. Recycling and reusing can be done on an individual scale as well as an industrial scale. These practices maximize the usage of resources as much as possible all while minimizing waste. They also manage the industrial and domestic waste disposal as they reduce the amount of waste discharged into the global environment. Reusing and recycling include: composting: the biological decomposition of organic garden and food waste in order to use it as soil conditioner, upcycling: increasing the value and quality in materials and products through the recycling process, freecycling: giving or getting free items from others before buying new ones industrial ecology: dismantling of massive artifacts to become input for new processes Environmental geology's approach to the decline of nonrenewable resources along with high amounts of waste polluting the Earth has been to reduce wasteful usage and recycle when possible. Land use Planning out the usage of land is important to reduce the risk of natural hazards on humans and their infrastructure, but mostly to reduce negative human impact on the natural environment. The land, water, air, materials, and energy use are all critically impacted by