Environment
Our interaction with the environment and communities in which we operate is an essential element to the success of our business.
We work hard to minimise our environmental footprint and we have been recognised nationally and internationally for achievements in areas ranging from forest rehabilitation and innovative waste management through to global leadership in reducing greenhouse impacts.
We recognise that input from stakeholders such as employees, neighbours and other interested parties expands our perspective and helps us to continually improve our environmental performance and by utilising the commitment and creativity of these groups we can better build on past achievements and continually challenge our performance in the future.
This continual improvement is driven through our Environmental Management System (EMS) which has been certified to international environmental standards ISO14001, this standard requires each of our operational locations to identify activities with the potential to significantly affect the environment, define the controls in place to manage those risks and develop action plans for improvement.
Throughout Australia, we have a range of forums in which to share information with neighbours, employees, community and government stakeholders – and more importantly seek their input and feedback on our performance.
Each of our operations throughout Australia specifically works with external stakeholders on the implementation of Environmental Improvement Plans (EIPs). These plans set out targets and actions for improving environmental performance and allow stakeholders to measure how well we are progressing against these targets.
Our operations also have community consultative groups which meet regularly to discuss issues relating to our operations and of interest to the local community.
Our approach to environmental management and sustainability means more than just a life-time commitment.
For example our skills at restoring mined land to a self-sustaining state reached new heights with the 2007 Botanical Richness Score assessed at 108.2%. This is the best result achieved by our Western Australian bauxite mines.
This achievement is testament to our rehabilitation process as industry best-practice, a fact recognised with five Western Australia Environmental Awards – the Golden Gecko, which we have won in 1992, 1996, 2000, 2002 and 2007.
Our success at rehabilitation is internationally renowned. In 2008 Alcoa was invited to author a series of papers for a special edition of the Restoration Ecology Journal focusing on our acclaimed environmental research and management of our mining operations.
The journal is the signature publication of the Society of Ecological Restoration International. Alcoa was a recipient of the Society’s ‘Model Project Award’ in 2003 for our work “Returning the Botanical Richness of the Jarrah Forest in Restored Bauxite Mines in Western Australia”.
The journal contains 15 papers examining a range of aspects of our mine rehabilitation, from soil structure and invertebrate return to fire ecology, the result of over four decades of research and development.
To date, our mining group has published over 120 peer-reviewed papers and book chapters, and over 100 printed conference papers, and nearly 600,000 people have visited our operations.
Our environmental team works in collaboration with local universities, government agencies and private researchers to understand the Jarrah Forrest ecosystem.
The benefits of our work in the area of mine rehabilitation are multiplied through the sharing of knowledge, activities and research advances with other stakeholders and this continues to be a key objective.
In 2008 Alcoa’s Marrinup Nursery also celebrated a major milestone – the 1 millionth tissue culture plant produced. The Marrinup Nursery is a vital resource and key to our rehabilitation success. The nursery’s employees use tissue culture to grow important jarrah forest plant species that cannot be propagated by any other method.
About 100,000 tissue cultures are grown each year for planting into rehabilitated bauxite mined areas in the jarrah forest of Western Australia.
Western Australian Mine Rehabilitation
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Case Studies
2008 Shows Success for Anglesea SO2 Management Project
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