Metals and minerals are the building blocks for thousands of everyday products from the smallest computer components through to transportation and building products. However, there are product stewardship issues relating to the safe use and consumption of metal and mineral products, their future availability and society's continuing need for them.

Individual mineral deposits are by their nature non renewable. However, the world is a long way from exhausting its minerals. New deposits are being discovered all the time and new technologies are being developed to turn rock that was previously thought to be without economic value into valuable ore. Once recovered from their ores, most metal uses are long lasting and they can also be re-used many times with little or no change to their properties.

Recycling is important and will doubtless continue to grow. Many mineral based materials are already being recycled but, for the foreseeable future, a large gap in raw material supply will remain to be filled by mining.

Potentially difficult issues arise not from the physical availability of minerals but from the social and environmental impacts of their recovery, from pressures of alternative land uses and from concerns over safe mineral use.

Metals and minerals can be used safely. However, we need to improve our understanding of the health, safety and environmental implications of their use. This includes not only the ecological and health impacts of these products but also the need to better understand and communicate their social and economic costs and benefits.

Therefore, we are working to:

• Ensure the use of our products does not harm people's health or the environment;
• Better understand the recycling potential of our products in partnership with downstream manufacturers;
• Better understand the future needs for metals and minerals; and
• Promote stakeholder and community engagement in relation to our products.

Find out more on the properties of Rio Tinto metals and minerals and the recycling of metals.

Product stewardship is an all embracing term for the way we address products, their uses and management at end of life. It includes production efficiency, releases to the environment, and ecological and health risk assessments, as well as hazard classification, life cycle assessment and recyclability. As part of these considerations, the natural occurrence of all minerals and the essential nature of some minerals for normal growth and development are also evaluated.

We are working on:

• Developing corporate wide guidance on product stewardship
• Lifecycle analysis
• Research programmes
• Hazard classification of metals