Finding better ways to provide the materials the world needs
Purpose & Values
The drive for innovation and continuous improvement is at the heart of our purpose
Business Strategy
Climate change is at the heart of our business strategy
We are 150
150 years of finding better ways
We supply the metals and minerals used to help the world grow and decarbonise
Iron Ore
Iron ore is the primary raw material used to make steel
7 things the world will need for a low-carbon future
Wind, sun and water – what else do you need to make renewable energy work?
Sustainability – the expectation, not the exception
Shaping our aluminium product offering to meet demand for greener metals
Bringing to market materials critical to urbanisation and the transition to a low-carbon economy
Look inside a mine of the future
Our most intelligent mine yet is pioneering new mining technologies
Rincon Project
A long-life, low-cost and low-carbon lithium source
Simandou Project
The world’s largest untapped high-grade iron ore deposit
Providing materials the world needs in a responsible way
Sustainability Reporting 2022
We have a responsibility to extract the full value from the minerals and materials we produce in the safest and most sustainable way possible
Climate Change
We’re targeting net zero emissions by 2050
Tailings
We’ve launched a new interactive map of our tailings facilities
We aim to deliver superior returns to our shareholders while safeguarding the environment and meeting our obligations to wider society
Country-by-country report 2022
Our Country-by Country report 2022 complements our Taxes Paid Report, covering financial information on a country-by-country basis for all countries where we had a taxable presence
Get the latest news, stories and updates
New partnership a slapshot for sustainability
Rio Tinto becomes official aluminium partner of the Montreal Canadiens
Fuelling our tanks with renewable diesel
Diesel made from renewable raw materials is helping us reduce emissions
Rio Tinto commits $150 million to Centre for Future Materials led by Imperial College London
Discover more about life at Rio Tinto
Graduates & Students
If you want to drive real change, we have just the place to do it
Empowering families with flexibility
Supporting new parents of any gender with equal access to parental leave
Available jobs
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Whatever our activity – mining, processing, hydroelectric power generation, or moving our supplies and products around the globe – we consider the potential to harm the environment through pollution.
Our environmental technical experts work with our process safety and operational engineers to ensure our operating systems and processes are managed to prevent harmful discharges or releases to the environment.
At a minimum, we comply with national and local environmental regulations related to waste management, water discharge and air emissions. We also apply our own standards, which set the minimum requirements to define, monitor and manage emissions at all our managed operations to prevent harm to people and the environment. These standards also require us to set performance requirements for resource efficiency, particularly relating to mineral and non-mineral waste management.
We contribute to sustainability initiatives across the value chain through our work with peers, industry associations, and customers. And we continually improve our due diligence mechanisms and assess the environmental performance of new suppliers and customers.
Pioneering a new source of a critical mineral
Meet one of the engineers helping to rethink how we manage mining tailings
How an environmentalist became the CEO of a mining company
Wastes and residues from our operational activities are a key area of environmental risk management for us. We try to minimise our impact through careful waste management, including mineral waste such as waste rock, slag and tailings, and non-mineral waste such as used oil, office and processing waste. We do this across our operations in many ways.
Tellurium is one of the rarest elements on Earth. And it’s an increasingly important one, because it’s used in many emerging technologies – like cadmium telluride (CdTe) solar panels, a highly efficient, rapidly manufactured, and lower-cost alternative to conventional silicon-based panels. Tellurium is usually found in small, sparse rock deposits, making it difficult to mine at scale. But at our Kennecott copper operations near Salt Lake City, Utah, we’ve discovered a way to extract tellurium from an unlikely source – slime.
For example, at our Oyu Tolgoi operations in Mongolia, 40-50% of waste materials are diverted from the waste management centre through re-use and recycling programmes. Not only is this reducing the volume of materials going to the landfill (prolonging the operational life of the waste management centre landfill cells) but it is also supporting Mongolian communities and industries. Waste oil is treated for reuse as lubricants, waste plastic is recycled into plastic pellets for reuse in the manufacturing of other products, and plastic pellets are converted into packaging and medical sharps containers. Used cooking oil from our kitchens is purified by a local company and used to make soap.
For more than a decade, we have had a dedicated team – including scientists, and marketing logistics experts – whose job has been to find value from the 350,000 tonnes of non-bauxite residue by-products we produced every year from our aluminium operations in Quebec, Canada. Currently, 85% of this is used to make new products. For example, we have turned anhydrite, a by-product from our Vaudreuil alumina refinery in Canada, into a safe and effective fertiliser for local blueberry growers.
We are working with Geocycle Canada and leading construction materials company Lafarge Canada to reuse waste from the aluminium smelting process to make cement. This new product – called Alextra – is made from used potlining, as part of the aluminium electrolysis process that would otherwise go to landfill. Alextra is the result of years of research and development, aimed at finding new ways to deliver sustainable outcomes and value from used potlining. Lafarge Canada will produce on average one million tonnes of cement a year at its facilities in Bath, Ontario, using Alextra as an alternative to raw materials such as alumina and silica, which are commonly refined or mined for use in the manufacturing of cement.
"As a global leader in building materials, we are committed to living up to the responsibility of helping to create a zero-waste future. In order to achieve this goal, we need progressive partners such as Rio Tinto.”
- Travis Smith, Geocycle Canada
It is not always possible to reuse or recycle waste, so we continually develop technology and build facilities to manage it in ways that minimise adverse environmental and community impact, disposal costs and future liabilities.
2016: At our Vaudreuil alumina refinery in the Saguenay, Canada, we implemented a two-phased project to overcome technical, environmental and social challenges and ensure the refinery could continue to operate in the future. Following public consultation, we built a new facility to filter and reduce the volume of bauxite residue waste at the existing storage site.
2017: Our development of a drilling waste removal system was awarded a certificate of merit in Western Australia’s 2017 Golden Gecko Awards for Environmental Excellence. This award recognises leading practice and innovation in environmental management and provides an opportunity to share experiences between government, industry and the community.
2018: Our Iron Ore Mineral Waste Management team won an International Network for Acid Prevention (INAP) Best Practice award: “Pilbara operations exemplify global best practice and deserve international recognition”.
Waste and residues from our operational activities are key areas of environmental risk management. In 2022, we continued to focus on managing potential contamination from these sources. This included working to remove all use of PFAS (perfluoroalkyl and polyfluoroalkyl substances) in fire-suppression systems at our sites by the end of 2022.
Although we removed the use of PFAS in the majority of these systems, in some instances this transition will not be completed until 2024 at the earliest. This is due to delays in starting the retrofit or overhaul of major pieces of infrastructure, as well as challenges in sourcing alternative fluorine free substances for use in fire-suppression systems in some jurisdictions.
At some of our long-life assets, we continually evaluate past waste management practices that have led to a need for remediation in the present. For example, in 2022, we remained focused on finding additional ways to transform waste and by-products from our aluminium operations into materials for use in the construction and agricultural sectors.
We have assets with chemically reactive mineral waste risks, which we manage by conducting independent reviews to assess the effectiveness of our risk management programmes and identify areas for improvement. In 2022, we conducted reviews at Yarwun in Australia, Oyu Tolgoi in Mongolia, and at Kennecott, Boron, Resolution Copper and the Ridgeway closed site in the US.
Clean air is critical for the health of our host communities and of the surrounding ecosystems. Our emphasis is on prevention, managing air quality through operational discipline and process improvement.
We comply with local and state regulations to protect air quality, and we also have our own air quality protection standard. This outlines requirements for how to monitor and manage air emissions at our managed operations. It also provides the framework to prevent, or otherwise mitigate effects that our activities could have on host communities and the environment. To do this, we work to understand our emissions and potential impacts, control emissions at their source, and implement strategies to deal with adverse conditions.
Mining processes, such as the use of fossil fuels, moving ores, waste streams, and smelting metals release gases and particulates into the atmosphere. The major air emissions from our operations are:
We monitor and control air emissions where we operate. Our site-based monitoring includes tracking and reporting air quality parameters at intervals related to the type of emission risk, and the requirements of stakeholders and regulators. We use this data on a continual basis to ensure mitigation and control systems are working as expected and to make adjustments where necessary.
In 2021 we announced new Scope 1 and 2 targets: We brought forward our 2030 target of reducing our scope 1 and 2 emissions by five years. We also tripled our 2030 target, increasing it to a 50% reduction in our scope 1 and 2 emissions.
Across the business, we continue to pursue improvements to air quality management, focusing on emissions of greenhouse gases and particulate matter and gases emitted by our operational activities including mining, materials handling, processing and transportation.
Many of our assets have multi-year air quality improvement projects in place. For example, at the Iron Ore Company of Canada (IOC), plans are under way to reduce emissions with additional dust collection and to reconfigure the stacks to improve dispersion in the atmosphere. At our Atlantic aluminium smelting operations in Canada, enhanced monitoring for key air pollutants that links emissions and operational data has reduced response times for upset conditions. Phase 1 of this project has reduced, by 90%, the amount of time stack emissions exceed recommended particulate concentrations. In some instances, we did not comply with permissible emission limits. For example, our Kennecott smelter experienced temporary equipment failures that, for safety reasons, required us to vent gases containing sulphur oxides directly to the stack. This resulted in short-term non-compliance but we remained compliant with our daily and annual limits and our continuous monitoring system indicated there was no adverse impact on ambient air quality.
How we process personal data provided or obtained through this website.
With the exception of the use of cookies, Rio Tinto generally does not seek to collect personal data through this website. However if you choose to provide personal data to Rio Tinto through this website (for example, by sending us an email), we will process that personal data to answer your query and if relevant, to manage our business relationship with you or your company. We won't process that personal data for other purposes except where required to meet our legal obligations or otherwise as authorised by law and notified to you.
If you choose to subscribe to our media releases or other communications, you can unsubscribe at any time (by following the instructions in the email or by contacting us).
With your consent, our website uses cookies to distinguish you from other users of our website. This helps us to provide you with a good experience when you browse our website and also allows us to improve our site. A cookie is a small file of letters and numbers that we store on your browser or the hard drive of your computer if you agree. Cookies contain information that is transferred to your computer's hard drive.
As some data privacy laws regulate IP addresses and other information collected through the use of cookies as personal data, Rio Tinto’s processing of such personal data needs to comply with its Data Privacy Standard (see Part 1 of our Privacy Policy), and also applicable data privacy laws.
With the exception of the use of cookies (explained below), Rio Tinto generally does not seek to collect personal data through this website. However if you choose to provide personal data to Rio Tinto through this website (for example, by sending us an email), we will process that personal data to answer your query and if relevant, to manage our business relationship with you or your company. We won't process that personal data for other purposes except where required to meet our legal obligations or otherwise as authorised by law and notified to you.
Part 1 of this Privacy Policy contains the Rio Tinto Data Privacy Standard, which provides an overview of Rio Tinto’s approach to personal data processing. There is additional information in the appendices to the Data Privacy Standard, including information about disclosures, trans-border data transfers, the exercise of data subject rights and how to make complaints or obtain further information relating to Rio Tinto’s processing of your personal data.
If you choose to subscribe to our media releases or other communications, you can unsubscribe at any time (by following the instructions in the email or by contacting us at digital.comms@riotinto.com).
With your consent, our website uses cookies to distinguish you from other users of our website. This helps us to provide you with a good experience when you browse our website and also allows us to improve our site.
A cookie is a small file of letters and numbers that we store on your browser or the hard drive of your computer if you agree. Cookies contain information that is transferred to your computer's hard drive.
As some data privacy laws regulate IP addresses and other information collected through the use of cookies as personal data, Rio Tinto’s processing of such personal data needs to comply with its Data Privacy Standard (see Part 1 of this Privacy Policy), and also applicable data privacy laws.
These Cookies are used to provide a better user experience on the site, such as by measuring interactions with particular content or remembering your settings such as language or video playback preferences.
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