Strategy

Sustainable development is an integral part of the way in which Rio Tinto conducts its business, with leadership coming from the board of directors and the chief executive.

Our global code of business conduct, The way we work, reinforces our commitment to integrate sustainable development thinking in the way we make decisions about finding, acquiring, developing, and operating assets around the world. To assist our people to understand what is expected of them, we launched Leading at Rio Tinto in 2009. This requires seven leadership competencies to be demonstrated at each level of our organisation and includes promoting sustainable development. It is being incorporated in our recruitment and selection, performance management and development planning processes.

Sound governance and high standards of conduct are sources of competitive advantage for us. They contribute to long term business success by securing access to talent and capital, enhancing reputation and improving operational performance and supply chain management. Environmental performance, community relations, employee wellbeing and transparency are just as important to us as the technical aspects of mining and processing.

We remain an active member of the International Council on Mining and Metals (ICMM) (www.icmm.com), which evolved from the Global Mining Initiative in 1998 and which aims to provide leadership on scientific and policy matters, maintain dialogue with all stakeholders, and promote best practice performance standards employing sustainable development principles.

Key achievements

• The way we work, our global code of business conduct, and Speak-OUT, our confidential whistle–blowing programme, were revised.
• Of the electricity we used in 2009, 70 per cent was from low carbon sources, mainly hydro.
• We achieved a 16 per cent reduction in our all injury frequency rate during 2009.
• We completed the health, safety and environment integration of Rio Tinto Alcan.
• Rio Tinto remains the largest private sector employer of indigenous Australians.
• Our new global leadership competency model, Leading at Rio Tinto, was launched.
• Why gender matters, a resource guide for our Communities work, was published.
• Our Pandemic Influenza Preparedness Plan was developed and rolled out to manage the swine influenza (H1N1) pandemic.
• We retained our listing on the FTSE4Good, Dow Jones Sustainability Indexes and Climate Disclosure Leadership Index, and ranked first on the Resources Global Professionals corporate governance survey.

Key priorities

• Continue to reduce injury rates toward our goal of zero, including zero fatalities.
• Implement our improved contractor safety management system and our new health, safety and environment framework for major project development.
• Implement our wellbeing strategy to guide development of a global framework for local health and wellbeing programmes.
• Expand our employee diversity focus to address ethnicity and nationality.
• Continue engaging on and preparing for evolving energy and greenhouse gas (GHG) emission regulation.
• Embed our energy use and GHG emissions intensity reduction programmes.
• Explore ecosystem service values of our non operational landholdings, in particular carbon, water and biodiversity opportunities.
• Continue to strengthen our management systems by developing and implementing strategies to manage our key sustainable development risks and improve performance.
• Support our new Group wide health, safety, environment and communities performance targets, building on the successes and challenges of our previous targets.

Goals and targets

We have set 2008 – 2013 targets for a range of sustainable development metrics including:

• Measuring progress towards our goal of zero injuries and zero fatalities through our all injury frequency rate.
• Thirty per cent reduction in the rate of new cases of occupational illness.
• Ten per cent reduction in the rate of employees exposed to an eight hour noise dose of more than 85 decibels.
• Operations having in place locally appropriate, publicly reported social performance indicators that demonstrate a positive contribution to the economic development of the communities and regions where we work which are consistent with the Millennium Development Goals.
• Six per cent reduction in total greenhouse gas emissions per unit of production. We are also targeting a further four per cent reduction by 2015, to deliver an overall ten per cent reduction.
• Six per cent reduction in our freshwater use per tonne of product.

Performance data

Rio Tinto’s sustainable development data are reported for calendar years and, unless otherwise stated, our inventories represent 100 per cent of the parameter at each managed operation, even though Rio Tinto may have only partial ownership.

Data reported in previous years may be modified if verification processes detect material errors, or if changes are required to ensure comparability over time.

Wherever possible, data for operations acquired prior to 1 October of the reporting period are included. Divested operations are included in data collection processes up until the transfer of management control.

Former Alcan operations (with the exception of the Engineered Products and Packaging divisions, which are in the process of being divested) have adopted our reporting definitions and have been included in our inventories since 1 January 2008.

We report in line with the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) G3 guidelines at Application level A+.

We have implemented ICMM’s ten sustainable development principles and disclosed the alignment of our policies, strategies, standards and practices with ICMM’s principles and position statements on our website.

The remainder of this section details the status and implementation of our systems and approaches to manage our material sustainable development issues and our performance in these areas. Further information on our data definitions, reporting criteria, our GRI report and our target setting and assurance processes can be found on our website www.riotinto.com.