Air quality monitoring and responsible water stewardship are key priorities for embedding sustainability as the way we do business.
AIR quality
We monitor and measure usage and emissions from direct fuel sources, such as diesel, as well as indirect emissions associated with purchased electricity and materials, for greenhouse gas emission monitoring and reporting and atmospheric emission licence compliance requirements.
Within our air quality efforts, dust control from tailings storage facilities is a key focus area, as is the reduction of sulphur dioxide emissions and particulate matter.
Water management
Water is a critical resource and is important to every aspect of our operations – drilling and blasting, milling and processing, the cooling of equipment, and for hydraulic tailings re-mining. Our employees and surrounding communities also depend on our water. Water management is an important aspect of our Group environmental planning processes, from early-stage feasibility to post-mining and closure.
We are committed to best practices in water conservation and water demand management and have taken an integrated approach to the management of our water footprint to ensure its responsible use, in a manner that is sustainable to production and to our host communities.
We face distinctly different water challenges at our SA gold, SA PGM and US PGM operations. Our SA PGM operations are situated in water-stressed areas in North West province, while our SA gold operations in the West Rand of Gauteng are, by contrast, overlain by dolomitic aquifers. They are largely water-positive, and it is necessary to pump large volumes of ingress water from these deep workings. Our US PGM operations are largely water independent and water positive.
It is a priority for our SA operations to reduce reliance on/ extraction from municipal water systems, both for cost and security of supply reasons, whilst at the same time increasing access to potable water for other users who rely on municipal water systems.
We aim to use alternative available underground water sources to replace purchased water and are identifying and reducing water wastage through improved metering, water balance management, leak detection, and repair initiatives.
