Nornickel, the world’s largest producer of palladium and high-grade nickel and a major producer of platinum and copper, recently announced that its Board of Directors has adopted the company’s holistic environmental strategy.(Photo quoted from Yahoo’s image)
This comprehensive plan will be rolled out across all of Nornickel’s operations starting from 2021. It was designed with a clear focus on generating measurable and achievable results to significantly improve the company’s environmental performance. The strategy follows a detailed stakeholder engagement and benchmarking audit based on key environmental goals.
The new strategy encompasses the six major areas of environmental impact, namely climate change; air; water; tailings and waste; land; and biodiversity, coupled with stakeholder engagement and communications, all of which are at the centre of Nornickel’s environmental activities.
In all, the strategy identifies 21 key targets in sustainability and industrial safety. These include reduction of SO2 emissions, complying with the Task Force on Climate-related Financial Disclosures (TCFD) principles and implementing the Global Tailings Standard principles.
The key initiatives to enable progress towards these targets include delivery of the Sulphur Programme; water recycling and reuse; land rehabilitation; asset monitoring; biodiversity impact assessment in all areas affected by the company’s operations; investing in green technologies and decarbonisation activities.
Nornickel is also renewing its environmental governance structure to improve risk management processes and ensure effective implementation of the strategy. In line with this aim, the company is creating corporate level departments covering Sustainable Development, Ecology, Industrial Safety and Occupational Health, Human Resources and Social Policy, and ensuring that all Nornickel’s employees are part of this transformative process.
Chairman of Nornickel Board of Directors Gareth Penny commented:
“The board applauds the company management’s effort to carry out the most significant overhaul of Nornickel’s environmental strategy in history. The holistic environmental strategy is a sign that Nornickel is strongly committed to the environment and fostering responsible business practices at every corporate level in a bid to become the world’s leading metallurgical company. For me personally one of the highlights of the strategy is the ambitious decarbonisation programme, the important step towards green metals.”
(IRuniverse)
