Men and women have been making bricks on the Caradale site at Armadale for generations. Brick clays are won from the earth by open cast mining or quarrying. Often they lie over or under seams of coal. The key environmental issues are disruption of the ecosystem, re-instatement of the land after mining and the danger of watercourse pollution caused by water runoff from the mine. Caradale is careful to source its clays from mines where these effects are carefully controlled and where the land will be re-instated in its natural form. The company endeavours to ensure that quarries exceed the British Ceramic Confederation’s code of practice for extraction and restoration.