Developing corporate guidance on product stewardship
In seeking to address product stewardship responsibilities, Rio Tinto and its businesses are developing guidance on incorporating product stewardship into business planning. Product stewardship is a programme that ensures that materials are managed appropriately at all stages of their life cycle. The corporate programme includes a product stewardship strategy, example product stewardship plans and supporting guidance documents for the business units.
Key components of the Rio Tinto PS programme include; lifecycle analysis, health and environment issue identification, regulatory interaction, and conducting research into a range of fields, including ecotoxicity and human toxicity, either independently or in collaboration with industry and research institutions. One example of such projects is a multi-metal transformation / dissolution project undertaken for the classification and labelling of metals. Rio Tinto also collaborated in a voluntary risk assessment for copper covering all of the European Union.
To take responsibility for standards of downstream processing of its diamond product, Rio Tinto Diamonds in 2003 introduced a Business Excellence Model (BEM). Kennecott copper recently completed a life cycle assessment of its copper, molybdenum and sulphuric acid.
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