Product stewardship
Product stewardship is about understanding the health and environmental impacts of our products across their life cycles; threats and opportunities in the marketplace; and the importance of engagement with key stakeholders, including customers, suppliers, regulators and communities.
The effective stewardship of products across the value chain focuses on the safe and environmentally responsible production, use, recycling and disposal of our metals and minerals. We aim to go beyond existing regulations, and help to formulate best stewardship practice based on sound science.
The elements of our product stewardship strategy focus on:
- integrating product stewardship into business decision making;
- securing market access and a competitive advantage;
- communicating product safety, health and environmental data; and
- engaging with others to create opportunities and enhance reputation.
- Market support
- Life cycle
- Engagement
- Results
Product stewardship programme implementation
We encourage our businesses to implement formal product stewardship programmes, and we aim to see product stewardship fully incorporated into all business planning. In 2010, 91 per cent of businesses had a formal product stewardship programme or had started the process.
Life cycle assessment on key products
We use life cycle assessment to understand the benefits and impacts of our products along the full value chain and to explore where shared responsibility exists beyond the production gate. Our focus is on the development of life cycle assessments on key products. In 2010 our businesses reported life cycle assessments for 65 per cent of key products across the Group.
Note: percentages may not add up to 100 per cent due to rounding.
Customer needs
Understanding the needs of our customers helps to build strong customer-client relationships and potentially "supplier of choice" arrangements, such as the Wal-Mart Love, Earth® product line. Our businesses look to identify and manage the environmental and health needs of customers, with 91 per cent reporting in 2010 that they had a customer programme in place. Customer programmes may include marketing, supply needs, technical product specifications or expanded hazard, risk and life cycle data.
Supplier management
Product stewardship programmes include systems which aim to influence the upstream health, safety and environmental performance of suppliers. Our businesses engage in activities to collect hazard, risk and life cycle data on the products, materials and services supplied to them. In 2010, 86 per cent of businesses reported the existence of a system to identify and influence supplier activities.
