The U.S. Mint stopped making pennies for circulation on November 12, 2025, because each one costs more to produce than its face value. But pennies have not been abolished: coins already in circulation remain legal tender, and Treasury guidance says retailers should continue accepting them and giving penny change. The cost case for ending production is clear; the claim that pennies are a proven major environmental harm is not.
Why did the Mint stop making circulating pennies?
The U.S. Mint says a penny now costs 3.69 cents to produce, up from 1.42 cents over the past decade, according to its current Penny FAQs. That means the government spends more than three cents to make a coin with a one-cent face value. The Mint estimates the suspension will save approximately $56 million a year in production costs.
The Mint describes the decision as a determination by the Treasury Secretary that circulating pennies are no longer necessary to meet the needs of the United States. That is the agency’s stated rationale, rather than an independent finding about how every household or business uses cash.
How much did pennies matter to Mint output?
In fiscal year 2024, the Mint produced and shipped approximately 3.2 billion pennies. They accounted for 57% of the 5.61 billion circulating coins it produced that year. Ending penny production therefore removes a large share of the Mint’s coin-making volume, even though the penny is worth only one cent.
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Are pennies still legal tender and accepted?
Yes. Existing pennies retain their one-cent nominal value and remain legal tender. On November 12, 2025, the Mint announced that it had struck the final circulating penny, ending 232 years of circulating production. It estimated that about 300 billion pennies were in circulation; that estimate does not mean all of them are actively used in retail transactions. The Mint says it will continue making limited numismatic pennies for collectors. See its final circulating penny announcement.
Treasury’s December 23, 2025 Penny Production Cessation FAQs say retailers should continue accepting pennies and providing penny change while coins remain in circulation. The FAQs are non-binding guidance, not a new law requiring a particular retailer to handle cash in a specific way. Consumers can also deposit pennies with financial institutions.
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What happens to cash change without new pennies?
Stopping production does not itself establish a nationwide cash-rounding rule. The Treasury FAQs support continued use and acceptance of pennies during the transition, but the sources available here do not settle how every retailer will handle a future shortage of pennies, whether cash totals will be rounded, or how taxes would be treated under any rounding policy.
Those details matter to the practical effect of the change. A policy comparison should account for how cash transactions are settled, whether rounding applies only to the final total, how tax is calculated, and whether cash users or retailers bear uneven costs. The end of production alone does not answer those questions.
Is making pennies bad for the environment?
Penny production has environmental impacts: the modern coin is 97.5% zinc and 2.5% copper, according to the Mint’s coin specifications, and mining, refining, and manufacturing metals use resources and can create pollution. But those facts do not establish the size of a U.S. penny’s environmental footprint or show that it is large compared with other sources of environmental harm.
The International Zinc Association reports a global-average figure of 3.5 kg CO2e per kg of primary Special High-Grade zinc in its zinc life-cycle assessment. That is a cradle-to-gate figure for zinc production, not a footprint per penny. Converting it into a per-coin estimate would require, among other things, the coin’s material mass, the copper contribution, plating and fabrication impacts, transport, useful life, and end-of-life assumptions.
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A 1996 Government Accountability Office testimony discussed potential water and air pollution from zinc mining and smelting. It also relayed an EPA official’s view at the time that the amount of zinc mined for pennies was insignificant compared with other mined metals. That is dated, attributed evidence—not a current measurement of penny production’s relative impact.
A 2018 life-cycle assessment by De Nederlandsche Bank found coin production to be a material part of the environmental impact of the Dutch cash-payment system. Its geography and system-wide scope do not isolate U.S. pennies, so it cannot establish the environmental effect of ending U.S. penny production.
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No U.S.-penny-specific life-cycle assessment or current comparative impact estimate is established by these sources. The sound conclusion is narrower: making pennies entails metal and manufacturing impacts, but the size and significance of those impacts relative to other sources have not been demonstrated here. Calling pennies definitively “bad for the environment” goes beyond the available evidence.
Independent reader supportYour contribution helps us test, update, and keep practical guides available for everyone.Does ending production make the penny useless?
“Useless” is a judgment, not a description of the coin’s legal status. Pennies remain legal tender and Treasury guidance supports their continued acceptance while they circulate. At the same time, the Mint’s production-cost figure gives policymakers a concrete reason to stop making new ones: the production cost substantially exceeds their face value.
The policy choice involves more than that one comparison. It also raises questions about cash handling and rounding, effects on people who rely on cash, retailers’ transition logistics, and the environmental impacts of production. The available official figures make the cost argument quantifiable; they do not by themselves resolve those other questions.
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