Finding better ways to provide the materials the world needs responsibly and safely.
At Smart Miners Ltd, our approach to sustainability is guided by our purpose: finding better ways to provide the materials the world needs. It’s about driving innovation and continuous improvement to produce the minerals and metals used in everyday life in the safest and most sustainable way possible.
Sustainability considerations are deeply embedded in the way we run our business. We have put climate change and the low-carbon transition at the heart of our business strategy. We shall decarbonise our assets, help our customers decarbonise by developing new products and technologies, and growing in materials essential for the energy transition.
Two of our 4 business objectives are focused on our social licence and achieving impeccable environmental, social and governance (ESG) credentials. This ensures we align our business priorities with society’s expectations and that sustainability considerations are at the core of every decision we make.
To meet our goals, we are focusing on developing the right mindset and culture, encouraging our people to work together to find new solutions and building partnerships with those who share our ambition.
Caring for each other is one of our values – it is part of who we are and the way we work, every shift, every day. Nothing is more important than the safety and wellbeing of our employees, contractors and communities.
We believe all incidents and injuries are preventable, so our focus is on identifying, managing and, where possible, eliminating risks.
We will use automation and robots to do some of our high-risk work. And we are focused and committed to strengthening our partnerships with industry and associated committees (eg ICMM), contracting partners and local communities with the priority of learning and sharing to protect everyone’s health, safety and wellbeing.
Our Community Development Agreements are negotiated agreements with communities and Indigenous Peoples. We have many agreements with community groups around the country, they help us establish respectful relationships with the communities where we operate and are often the result of years of engagement.
Our agreements document mutual obligations and expected behaviours from our employees and contractors. They help reduce the impact of our projects on communities, people and environment. And they help make sure benefits are shared directly with those affected and empower communities to decide how to use these benefits.
Our agreements establish a framework for engaging with communities and Indigenous Peoples, often going beyond legal requirements and forming long-term relationships. These frameworks also set value-sharing models for financial and non-financial benefits to communities for access to land, cultural heritage management, employment, business development, training and education and other important areas.
These agreements provide accountability mechanisms and performance indicators covering all stages of the mining lifecycle from exploration through to closure so the parties can hold each other accountable to deliver on their commitments.
We are dependent on healthy ecosystems to run a successful business and we recognise our responsibility to effectively mitigate the impact of our operations on nature.
Healthy natural environments with functioning ecosystems are key to climate resilience. They also provide important services to the communities where we operate and our business. We are committed to protecting biodiversity, and our ambition is to achieve no net loss where we operate. This means striking a balance between negative impacts on biodiversity and positive outcomes achieved through mitigation.
Producing the materials the world needs require access to land. However, mines are finite and as temporary custodians of the land, we need to consider the end right from the very start, planning and operating with the future in mind. Caring for the land is also essential to the protection of biodiversity and the natural heritage of the environments where we live and work.
We have rehabilitation programs in place, which are reviewed every year, and dedicated teams that look after the land throughout the life of the operation. Our engineers, environmental scientists and cultural heritage experts work with academic institutions, civil society organisations, Indigenous peoples and other members of the community to make sure rehabilitation is done in ways that ensure a successful, self-sustaining outcome in line with the expectations of regulators and host communities.
When we begin exploration, long before our operations start, we work with local communities, including Indigenous peoples, to understand the physical, spiritual and cultural connection they have with the land. We conduct cultural heritage and environmental studies to understand the area and look for ways to avoid or reduce any impacts.
We strive to obtain the free, prior and informed consent (FPIC) of Indigenous peoples, as applicable in local jurisdictions, and also engage other affected communities. We were the first mining company in Australia to welcome native title to land and commit to forming agreements with Indigenous landowners. But we know we need to do better.
Water is a shared resource critical to sustaining biodiversity, people and economic prosperity. Increasingly disrupted weather patterns and more extreme weather events due to climate change, and a growing world population, mean efficiently managing water is more important than ever.
The way we think about water, and manage associated risks, reflects the diversity of our operations and geographic locations. A small proportion of our assets operate in water-scarce regions, while others must remove excess water to allow safe mining operations. These are examples of the many potential risks we manage across the life cycle of our diverse operations.
We share water with the communities and nature surrounding our operations, so we aim to avoid permanent impacts on water resources, including lakes, streams and groundwater aquifers, by carefully managing the quality and quantity of the water we use and return to the environment. This means balancing the needs of our operations with those of local communities and local ecosystems. We do this while considering the impact of climate change, already felt in the level of rainfall and water security at some of our operations. To address this complexity, we adopt a catchment-level approach to developing potential solutions and managing our risks and impacts within our operations. We use 2030 water stress as determined by the World Resources Institute to identify operational catchments of most concern.
Whatever our activity – mining, processing, hydroelectric power generation, or moving our supplies and products around the globe – we consider the potential to harm the environment through pollution.
Our environmental technical experts work with our process safety and operational engineers to ensure our operating systems and processes are managed to prevent harmful discharges or releases to the environment.
At a minimum, we comply with national and local environmental regulations related to waste management, water discharge and air emissions. We also apply our own standards, which set the minimum requirements to define, monitor and manage emissions at all our managed operations to prevent harm to people and the environment. These standards also require us to set performance requirements for resource efficiency, particularly relating to mineral and non-mineral waste management.
We contribute to sustainability initiatives across the value chain through our work with peers, industry associations, and customers. And we continually improve our due diligence mechanisms and assess the environmental performance of new suppliers and customers.
Responsibly managing waste from mining operations is essential, as is being transparent with our stakeholders about our tailings facilities and how we manage them.
We strive to protect the health and safety of people, and to protect the surrounding environment, in the best way we can, everywhere we operate. Our tailings facilities are regulated, permitted and have been managed for many years to comply with local laws, regulations, permits, licenses and other requirements. Our Safety Standard for the Management of Tailings and Water Storage Facilities and the supporting Group Procedure for the Management of Tailings and Water Storage Facilities have been in place, and are updated periodically. Our internal assurance processes verify that the tailings facilities we manage are operated in accordance with this our Standard.