Glencore receives sustainable mining award

Glencore's Sudbury operations received the Mining Association of Canada's Towards Sustainable Mining Leadership Award for meeting or exceeding results in six areas of performance.

Those performance areas are health and safety, Aboriginal and community outreach, crisis management, tailings management, biodiversity conservation management, and energy use and greenhouse gas emissions management.

For greenhouse gas emissions management, Glencore achieved the Mining Association of Canada's highest score possible, with a AAA rating.

“The TSM Leadership Award is a rare distinction. It is given to operations that demonstrate leadership in these key areas,” said Mining Association of Canada president and CEO Pierre Gratton, in a press release. “With this award, we celebrate the dedicated employees of Glencore's Sudbury Integrated Nickel Operations for being a role model to other mining operations in Canada.”

The association has awarded only a small number of mining companies with its Towards Sustainable Mining awards in the last 10 years. They include: Syncrude Canada's oil sands facility (awarded in 2007), Barrick Gold Corporation's Hemlo Mine (awarded in 2011), Teck's Elkview Operations (awarded in 2013), Teck's Cardinal River Operations (awarded in 2014), and Teck Trail Operations (awarded in 2014).

“Many of the milestones that we have accomplished in our sustainable development performance are a direct result of the contributions of our employees across all levels in our organization and so this is quite special,” said Glencore vice-president Marc Boissonneault, in a press release.

“This award represents our concerted efforts on a number of important fronts, including the advancement of our safety culture to much higher levels. I am especially proud of our employees in this regard as safety is core to everything that we do.”