ENVIRONMENT
Environmental stewardship
ARM’s values, governance structures and ethical leadership guide employees and management to behave with integrity and act appropriately in the context of our natural environment and the country’s socioeconomic realities. We recognise that we have a responsibility to manage and mitigate the potential negative impacts of our business activities. At the same time, it is the value created by these activities that gives us the opportunity to support growth and development in the societies in which we operate.
Mining, crushing and milling, and the processing and beneficiation of minerals and metals present challenging working conditions. Hazard identification and risk assessment is critical to ensuring appropriate controls for mitigation of harm.
ARM’S most material environmental matters
- Water
- Climate change
- Resource management, particularly energy use and water availability (with a specific focus on recycling and minimising withdrawal of clean water)
- Managing and minimising our waste streams
- Land management, including biodiversity conservation rehabilitation and closure planning
- Responsible tailings management
Principal environmental impacts
Water
Water is vital and the earth’s water systems are under significant threat from rising water consumption, greater pollution, weak governance, and climate change. We are seeing shifting weather patterns, altering water supplies and intensifying extreme weather events such as floods and droughts. ARM is exposed to increased water-related risks that could affect production, increase costs, constrain growth, disrupt our supply chains and place our communities under significant strain. We need to contribute to, and focus our efforts on, ensuring a watersecure future that is socially and culturally equitable, environmentally sustainable, and economically beneficial
Climate change
Climate change is one of the most critical global challenges of our time. Warming of the climate is unequivocal, the human influence is clear and physical impacts are unavoidable. This will have a lasting impact on our business, our communities and the world. Climate change is a global challenge that requires a collaborative market, policy and societal response and ARM wants to be part of the solution to help address this challenge
Tailings
Responsible management of tailings disposal is critical. We are committed to ensuring the stability of our Tailings Storage Facilities (TSFs) and a professional engineer is appointed to perform this specialised function for each of our TSFs. Our governance processes and combined assurance include a strong focus on tailings management.
Product stewardship
While the mining and processing of metals and minerals have an impact on the natural environment and communities, many of the benefits of modern society would not be possible without them. Metals play a key role in the infrastructure and the technologies around us. With increasing population, urbanisation, industrialisation, economic development and the introduction and growth of new technologies, the need for more metals and minerals will continue.
ARM encourages responsible use, re-use, recycling and disposal of our products to minimise the lifecycle impacts they may have on the environment and the people who use them.
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