Artisanal and small-scale gold mining (ASGM) has received increased attention in recent years from international organizations seeking to reduce the 2000 tons of mercury emitted yearly by this sector. Miners do not have the resources to buy gold processing equipment, so they bring their ore to processing plants to recover their gold at a low cost. Tailings that miners leave behind for payment, which usually contain most of the gold, are processed by the plant owners using cyanidation. The pollution from this process harms the environment and leads to the disempowerment of miners, important themes that the SDGs seek to address. It is well documented, however, that ASGM can make positive contributions to almost all SDGs. The goal of this paper is to analyze how communal processing plants, a model where miners have ownership over their own clean processing methods, can make positive contributions to the SDGs. We will show the inadequacy of one-dimensional interventions aimed at improving gold processing practice and dissect the lessons learned from our fieldwork about the failure of these models in Colombia. This method of assessing humanitarian technologies with respect to SDGs can be applied to technologies with complex relationships to the environment and humans.