Mining, smelting and associated activities have an impact on the environment. Digging a hole in the ground to gather mineral resources means that various aspects of the environment, such as land, water and ecosystems, will be affected.

At Rio Tinto, we accept the challenge of environmental stewardship. In order to do this, we seek to understand the environmental aspects and impacts of what we do, build what we learn into systems to manage and minimise those impacts, and to hold informed discussions on our activities with our employees, neighbours, investors and other interested parties.

Building from a foundation of compliance with applicable laws and voluntary commitments, we seek continuing improvement through applying best practices appropriate to local situations. We set targets for these 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 and the associated environmental standards provide us with a rigorous continuous improvement framework to support us in planning, implementing, checking and reviewing our environmental programmes.

Our environmental management programmes include taking responsibility for issues relating to greenhouse gas emissions and climate change, and for product stewardship issues, such as the safe use of metal and mineral products, their future availability and society's continuing need for them.

Understanding the impacts on the resources we use in our activities includes:

• How we use energy;
• How we manage water resources; and
• How we manage the land we control.

Reducing the outputs of our activities that have potential environmental impacts includes:

• Understanding and controlling airborne emissions;
• Understanding and reducing our greenhouse gas emissions; and
• Managing our mineral and non mineral wastes.