The people that go to work every day at IOC expect to do so in a safe and healthy work environment. This is not an option but a minimum requirement. Creating a culture in which everyone contributes responsibly and proactively to their own safety and the safety of their co-workers, requires many things to come together: awareness, information, and skills, as well as the safe installation, operation and maintenance of facilities and equipment. It also requires making safety a value even higher than that of such key areas as quality, productivity, and cost efficiency. In fact, we believe that the safest facilities are the most productive, have the lowest costs, and consistently deliver the best products.

IOC recognizes that the mining industry has a direct impact on the environment. We extract ore from the ground. We process it using energy and water. We generate waste, emissions, and greenhouse gases. Through the entire process, we recognize that we have a responsibility to minimize, and eliminate where possible, these impacts. While the fist step to continuously improving environmental performance is awareness, at IOC we go much further. Acting on the commitments in our Environment, Safety and Health (ESH) Policy, we assess our impact on ecosystems, evaluate future risks, design management systems to mitigate impacts, establish challenging objectives, and measure our performance against key success indicators.

See also : Rio Tinto Sustainable Development section