Inmet has always taken a straightforward approach to sustainability and corporate responsibility: manage business risks prudently and, as much as possible and practical, do what’s best for people and the environment.

We focus on safety and occupational health because we are involved in a business that presents real, and sometimes very serious, hazards that must be managed to ensure the safety and well being of our workers. Our business also involves impacts on the environment, so environmental responsibility has always been an equally high priority. We aim for a net neutral or, ideally, positive impact on the environment over the life of our mines, even when that goes beyond the regulatory requirements of the regions we’re operating in.

Strong leadership is provided by senior management throughout the organization, supported by formal management systems that describe our approach to managing our health and safety and environmental risks and responsibilities in detail. We benchmark our performance against evolving international practices, and continuously strive to improve. Environmental protection and worker safety are explicit responsibilities of every employee at our operations, reflected in both job descriptions and performance evaluations. In the area of safety, we go beyond compliance, seeking the most effective means of protecting workers on the job every day. We set short, medium and long-term environmental goals for our sites, executed by skilled and knowledgeable professionals. We also provide full and open cooperation to regulatory authorities and external organizations, such as Towards Sustainable Mining and the Carbon Disclosure Project, meeting or exceeding regulatory environmental requirements throughout the full life cycle of our projects.

New demands and challenges in Corporate Responsibility

Society expects business to be transparent about its activities and gains, accountable for its actions, and proactive in encouraging and catalyzing the development of fair and open markets, sustainable communities and robust ecosystems. Accordingly, we have maintained an open and transparent approach to our business and in our dialogue with all stakeholders and in our reporting for many years.

To ensure that local people and communities share in the wealth creation generated by the extraction of natural resources, mining companies must invest meaningfully according to their needs and priorities and with their full support, engagement and participation in decision making. In some jurisdictions, companies must also use their influence to model safer, healthier, more equitable business practices and to engage host governments and other stakeholders in meeting international best practice in the areas of safety, labour standards and environmental protection.

We are focused on making purposeful investments that benefit both Inmet and its stakeholders to contribute meaningfully to social development. Our operations are incorporating findings from their socio-economic assessment reviews into community engagement and investment plans.

In the area of human rights, we are committed to ensuring our activities do not adversely affect internationally recognized rights, and to providing effective recourse if they do. Corporate, operational and project management are jointly responsible for understanding how our activities could affect human rights and for ensuring employees have adequate awareness and tools to minimize negative impacts. Starting in 2011, our operations are expected to report on recent and emerging issues in their monthly reports to management and to have effective community feedback mechanisms in place end of 2011. 

View the 2011 sustainability report to review our performance and other information in more detail.