One of our core values is to protect the environment by minimizing the impact of our operations. We’re committed to the Towards Sustainable Mining (TSM) guiding principles, which include finding ways to minimize the impact of our operations on the environment through all stages of development.

There’s no question that mining activities affect air, water, soil and ecosystems. Being a good steward of the environment means mitigating, as much as possible, our impact on the environment and taking appropriate steps to rehabilitate affected areas when our work there is done.

In 2009, Çayeli and Pyhäsalmi implemented water and energy conservation plans, and our development property in Panamá completed most of its environmental impact assessment. Water management and compliance at Las Cruces was challenging as it ramped up operations.

While total energy and water consumption and greenhouse gas emissions were down in 2009 compared to 2008, we were disappointed by a higher number of environmental incidents.

Key Environment Highlights for 2009

• reportable environmental incident frequency increased 133 percent over 2008 (reflecting better reporting and the ramp up of operations at Las Cruces)
• absolute water consumption decreased by 5 percent from 2008, to 13.4 million cubic metres (an intensity reduction of nearly seven percent from 2008 and 10 percent from 2007)
• absolute energy consumption decreased by 24 percent from 2008, to 2.03 million gigajoules (an intensity reduction of 3.3 percent from 2008 and 2.1 percent from 2007)
• absolute greenhouse gas emissions decreased by 26 percent, to about 118,000 tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent (an intensity decrease of 0.2 percent from 2008 and an increase of 1.9 percent from 2007).

Download the PDF of our environmental performance in 2009.