sustainability
We’re accountable not only to our shareholders, but also to employees, communities and society at large.
Our success in developing a sustainable business depends in part on how successful we are at making our operations safe and rewarding places to work, and on how well we manage the economic, environmental and social impacts we have on the communities we operate in.
Our work toward sustainability focuses on six areas:
- Approach
- Policies and standards
- Health and safety performance
- Environmental performance
- Community affairs performance
- Industry involvement
Measuring our performance
Each year we set safety, environmental and community affairs targets for the corporation as a whole.
| 2008 SECA Objectives |
2008 Performance |
2009 Targets |
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1. Complete High Consequence Protocols (HCPs) and develop implementation plans.
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HCPs were fully developed and incorporated into our SECA Standards. Guidance documents describing technical details were developed for eight of nine activities that have a high probability of resulting in fatality should an accident occur. We identified gaps at our majority-owned operations and Closed Properties against our SECA Standards and HCPs.
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Implement higher standards for safety and environmental performance
Reduce lost-time injury frequency, total injury frequency and severity
Reduce environmental incident intensity
Improve company-wide safety and health training programs
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2. Develop implementation plans for the SECA Standards at our majority-owned operations.
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Each majority-owned operation and the Closed Properties developed an implementation plan to ensure that all SECA Standards will be met by 2012 as per our SECA strategic objectives.
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Evaluate the pros and cons of third-party verification of our annual sustainability report |
3. Increase community affairs resources at our majority-owned operations.
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We increased human resources at Çayeli but did not add additional community affairs staff at Las Cruces, Pyhäsalmi or Troilus. The reasons for not adding staff at these locations are described in the operations sections of the sustainability report.
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Turn plans into action:
Address identified gaps between current operation performance and performance desired by SECA standards and high consequence protocols
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| 4. Conduct a socio-economic assessment at each majority-owned operation. |
We did not complete a socio-economic assessment at our operations during 2008. We determined that we would need a framework to facilitate completion of such assessments and thus selected the Socio-Economic Assessment Toolbox¹ (SEAT) to help us improve our focus on understanding our communities and our role within them. We convened a company-wide workshop to introduce SEAT, identify and address concerns and build support within the company for its use. Two of the sites prepared company and community profiles and action plans for completing their SEAT reports by the second quarter of 2009.
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Define community development strategies based on Socio-Economic Assessment Toolbox (SEAT) evaluations |
5. Develop energy and water conservation plans at each majority-owned operation.
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Pyhäsalmi and Çayeli drafted energy and water conservation plans. Troilus did not develop such plans as it is nearing the end of its mine life. Las Cruces will develop its plans in 2009.
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Implement water management plans
Implement energy and greenhouse gas reduction plans
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6. Join the United Nations Global Compact. |
We joined the United Nations Global Compact.
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¹
Developed by Anglo American plc.
Our operations also establish their own targets, which are detailed in our sustainability report.
We measure our performance using indicators from the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) and Towards Sustainable Mining (TSM), an initiative of the Mining Association of Canada, along with several indicators we've developed.
Download a copy of our
2008 sustainability report to review our performance and other information in more detail.
Full report (PDF English - 2.3 MB)