Environmental standards

Rio Tinto has produced a series of requirements and guidance mechanisms for its operations, such as the Health safety and environment policy, a number of guidelines and more recently the Safety standards and Occupational health standards. To complete this sequence, and draw existing requirements and guidelines for environmental management together, we are developing a set of Environmental Standards.

The Standards are being developed for the range of development phases of our activities (e.g. design, construction, operation, rehabilitation and closure); the various types of activities we are involved in (e.g. exploration, mining, processing, refining and transport); as well as the resources-product cycle of our activities (e.g. natural resources and other inputs, wastes and products). It is intended that Standards be developed to cover both management and performance. Management standards are to cover areas such as management systems, risk assessment and impact assessment while the performance standards will cover areas such as handling of waste, air quality, noise and vibration control, ecosystem and biodiversity management, water management and closure planning and implementation.

Development of the standards is drawing upon the knowledge and experience on environmental management that exists in our operations, Technical Services and corporate functions. In addition, information flowing from external activities such as our biodiversity partnerships and the challenges that will flow from the MMSD process, will be built into the standards as they are developed. Full implementation of the Standards is planned for 2004.

The Standards will become an integral part of Rio Tinto’s assurance process and will assist improvements in environmental performance.