Is mercury a renewable resource or is it non-renewable?

Answer 1

Renewable refers to things like wind or sunshine, which keep on coming even if we use them to produce energy.

Other things get used up and don't renew.

So silver is non-renewable. When we use it all up, it's gone!

Answer 2

ANSWER:Its nonrenewable. Answer:Mercury is a non-renewable resource.

The rational for the answer:

A renewable resource is one where the supply grows or replenishes itself with time. (Examples: Fish, trees, cows, methane from anaerobic digestion). The term is sometimes expanded to include resources like geothermal energy, wind or sunshine which are not depleted in any measurable fashion by use.

A material which is in finite (even if large) supply (petroleum, helium, uranium) is non-renewable as we are working from a limited supply. New supplies cannot be made by any present technology (no Star Trek replicators). When the present supply (exploited and unexploited) is done, it is gone.

Ah, but "What about Plutonium?" you might ask. "We make that in Breeder Reactors!." Sorry but no. Plutonium is a manufactured product using Uranium as a starting point. When the radioactives are all fissioned we're are out of them until we create fusion reactors.

A non-renewable recoverable or recyclable material is a material which can be used once, then recovered and reworked since it is unchanged by physical changes (gold is a good example, basically gold today can contain recovered gold from thousands of years in the past). Note though, that once the gold in use equals the amount of gold we have total, we're in the same position as a non-renewable resource and we can't make any more.

Mercury, like gold, falls into the non-renewable recyclable category. When we use up what we've got (mine every bit) we're done. Unlike gold, mercury is chemically active. It turns to oxides. It is also volatile, whenever it gets exposed to air a bit goes off as vapour. So we lose it in a non-recoverable fashion and the supply is constantly depleting.
nonrenewable