does aluminum impact the environment when it is obtained?

Answer 1

Yep, aluminium impacts the environments a lot. Aluminium ore (bauxite) is found only only in the top few meters of the earth. So strip-mining is employed. The forest, or whatever, is cleared over a very wide area and only the top few meters of ground taken. That said Alcoa (the main aluminium mining company) is pretty good at rehabilitating the environment after they've taken the ore.

The other big impact aluminium has is in the processing of the ore which uses absolutely huge amounts of electricity. So a lot greenhouse gases are released back at the power plant as a consequence. Some noxious chemicals are also released to the atmosphere during the processing itself.

Answer 2

ANYTHING that is removed from the earth impacts the local environment. At the very minimum, you had to have dug a hole to get to the ore in question. Since you don't want to be trucking around a lot of useless ore to get the little bits that are useful, you process the ore on-site, which means rock crushers, chemicals, etc., to separate the desired bits from the undesired bits. The chemicals are usually toxic and nasty and will contaminate the undesired bits that are left behind to be dumped in the tailing pile. Rain will the leech out the noxious chemicals to be suffused into the ground water or local rivers.

Answer 3

Not unless you consider strip mining of tropical areas an impact to the environment.