Materials and waste management

As global populations grow and industrialise, effective materials management becomes increasingly important for people, the environment, and nature. We produce materials that play an important role in the economy while managing mineral and non-mineral materials and wastes responsibly. We strive to enhance our approach to materials management practices by designing out waste where possible, keeping resources in use longer, and safely and responsibly disposing of wastes.

Our Environment standards include our position and commitment to responsible waste management and materials stewardship. The standards cover the import, storage, use and ultimate disposal of hydrocarbons, reagents, process fluids, non-mineral wastes and other materials that could pose environmental risks because of their physical and chemical properties. They also cover potential and actual releases from reactive mineral waste, and the management of geochemical issues associated with rock masses disturbed or exposed by open pit and underground mining.

Our materials and waste management risk framework is designed to ensure that the management of materials and wastes are both operationally effective and strategically aligned with our environmental commitments and stakeholder expectations. To manage materials and wastes across our diverse portfolio, we’ve developed a risk framework and associated control library. Together, they identify, assess, manage and communicate these risks. This risk framework is embedded in our assets’ approach to operational risk management. It covers 3 categories:

• Management of Hazardous materials and non-mineral waste (issues relating to how we use, store, manage or dispose of hazardous materials and/ or non-mineral waste) “Have we applied the waste mitigation hierarchy to prevent, reuse, recycle, recover and dispose of our wastes in a manner that maximises resource efficiency and minimises impact to the environment?”
• Contamination from hazardous materials, non-mineral or chemically reactive mineral waste (issues relating to the presence of contamination resulting from material storage and/or disposal) “Do we understand the extent and exposure pathways for the hazardous material(s) present in an area of contamination and do we have a management or remediation plan to address the risks?”
• Chemically reactive mineral waste management (issues relating to how we characterise, use, store, manage or dispose chemically reactive minerals) “Is there a possibility for chemically reactive minerals to cause pollution or harm to the environment? Do we have adequate controls and plans to manage this material?”

We use the framework to survey risk across our portfolio. We also collect annual and cumulative metrics from each asset on reuse, recycling, reduction, storage and disposal (on and off-site) for mineral, non-mineral and hazardous materials, as well as identification of any supplier initiatives. This is reported annually and more detailed information can be found in the Sustainability Fact Book.

Our controls guide how we manage mineral and non-mineral materials and wastes, including their characterisation, design and planning, integrated management, monitoring and disposal. Materials and waste management is connected to other areas of our business. We align and integrate our approach with how we manage water and tailings, communities and social performance, procurement and closure.