At Rio Tinto, we accept the challenge of reducing disturbance of the environment to as low a level as possible.

In order to do this, we seek to understand the environmental consequences of what we do, build what we learn into systems to manage those consequences, and provide information on our activities to those who are interested.

Building from a foundation of compliance with applicable laws and voluntary commitments, we seek continuing improvement through applying best available practices appropriate to local situations. We set targets for those improvements and publicly report our progress against them.

One step in the management of the effects of our activities on the environment is the implementation of environmental management systems. Management systems provide us with a continuous improvement framework to support us in planning, implementation, checking and reviewing our environmental programmes.