Appelglobal has worked on small-scale mining issues for more than twenty years, covering a broad spectrum of problems from environmental hazards caused by small-scale mining to health hazards to conflict resolution between miners and governments. Much work has aimed at fulfilling governmental obligations to follow the Minamata Convention. The work has been carried out in Southeast Asia, Africa, South- and Central America. Main focus has been to reduce/stop use of mercury in gold extraction by teaching small-scale gold miners techniques which are mercury-free and has an extra bonus of yielding more gold to the miners. The work has been sponsored by a number of donors such as World Bank, European Union, Danish Ministry of Environment, and Danish Embassies in several countries. Most of the work is carried out in close cooperation with small-scale gold miners from Emerald Cooperation of small-scale gold miners, Philippines.

Another important issue has been to explore and develop techniques to clean the millions of tailings dams for mercury littering the developing countries. The tailings contain high amounts of mercury in form of tiny spheres of mercury (mercury flour) which could not be captured by the miners and thus ends in tailings where they over time is a main contributor of the global mercury pollution. The mercury flour contains large amounts of gold which, if a successful method can be developed, will cover the clean-up of the tailings. This work is being carried out with partners in Denmark, USA and Nicaragua.