RELAVE, PERU ¨C Tucked between two desert ridges in southern Peru, Relave looks like any of the hundreds of ramshackle mining towns that blight the landscape in the world¡¯s sixth-largest gold exporter.
Its name in Spanish means ¡°tailings,¡± a nod to the heaps of mining waste that the town, a sprawling collection of wooden shacks and simple concrete huts, sits upon.
But Relave is also home to Aurelsa ¡ª one of the first small-scale mines in the world to produce gold certified and marketed as ¡°ethical¡± as part of a program aimed at reducing the harmful impact of illegal mining in mineral-rich developing countries.
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