Reimagine, Recreate, Restore
The UN Decade on Ecosystem Restoration will be launched on the 4th of June 2021, ahead of World Environment Day on 5th of June 2021. This year Sibanye-Stillwater joins the celebration through our unwavering commitment to deliver on our environmental objectives and improve life.
Our vision at Sibanye-Stillwater is to create superior value for all our stakeholders through the responsible mining of our mineral resources. The sustainable management of our operations is integral to our ability to obtain and maintain our social licence to operate and to generate long-term value for all of our stakeholders, including employees, our communities where we operate, governments and our environment.
Some of our exciting focus areas:
Creating meaningful partnerships for restoration
We can only achieve sustainable ecological restoration goals through collaborative efforts. To this end we have formed several local and international partnerships.
- We were accepted as members to the ICMM in February 2020 and align and ascribe to the World Gold Council’s Responsible Gold Mining Principles.
- We report on the Ten Principles of the United Nations Global Compact, to which we also became a signatory.
- The Precious Metal Refinery has adopted the London Platinum and Palladium Market (LPPM) responsible sourcing principles and it has been certified following assurance in 2020.
- We also participate in the accelerated programme of the 17 United Nations Sustainable Development Goals to ensure tangible actions and proof points geared towards meeting set environmental targets.
- We were awarded an “A” rating placing the company in the prestigious global A-List of companies pioneering responses to the climate change challenge.
Subscribing to the principles set out by the memberships to which we align coupled with transparent disclosure of our progress in achieving our targets is critical to our success and restoration.
Reimagining mining to a green future
Sibanye-Stillwater is a leading international precious metals mining company, with a diverse portfolio of platinum group metal operations. Platinum Group Metals (PGM) through auto catalysts, transform noxious exhaust gasses - hydrocarbons (HC), nitrogen oxide (NOx) and carbon monoxide (CO) – into more benign components (water (H2O), carbon dioxide (CO2) and nitrogen gas (N2)). Sibanye-Stillwater is a global leader in the recycling of spent auto catalysts. In 2020 alone, our Columbus Metallurgical Complex operation recycled a total of 840koz of palladium, platinum, and rhodium. This environmentally friendly PGM production process, uses 63 times less water, produces 90 times less waste rock, and emits one-sixth of greenhouse gas emissions compared to conventional mining methods. We have also recently diversified our portfolio geographically and by commodity with the acquisition of a 30% stake in a lithium hydroxide project in Finland. Our entry into the battery metals space. This is how we reimagine responsible mining.
We consider climate change to be one of the most pressing global environmental challenges. We recognise the contribution of mining to global warming and understand the impacts of climate change on our business, and have focused our commodity mix such that the commodities we mine will play a meaningful role in mitigating climate change. In support of the Paris Agreement and the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals, Sibanye-Stillwater has also set a goal to achieve net-zero emissions by 2040, which is underpinned by an energy and decarbonisation strategy. This strategy includes adapting our mining practices, eliminating energy waste, incorporating renewable energy and the incorporation of nature-based solutions to name a few. In 2020, we avoided emitting 165,270 tCO2e of emissions through improved energy efficiency. Our focused efforts on forests, wetlands, and impacted lands that form the vast natural systems in and around our operations, will enhance the environment’s self-regenerating capacity, strengthen ecosystem resilience and enable better carbon sequestration. This is how we reimagine responsible mining and mitigating the impacts of climate change.
Recreating ecosystems
Sibanye-Stillwater has embarked on a restoration journey for the areas impacted by our mining operations. The target of these restoration activities does not aim to merely restore these systems to pre-impact conditions but rather towards recreating them into sustainable ecosystems that will support and enhance the environment and the surrounding socio-economic conditions. We recognise that we are not alone in influencing and impacting upon these altered ecosystems and thus cannot restore them without the support and buy-in of the other industry players and communities that will utilise and benefit from the long term sustainable ecosystems created. This is one way we think differently about recreating for a sustainable post mining future.
Through these efforts and many more, we aim to be part of the solution and support #GenerationRestoration.
