Mining company Rio Tinto is making history by becoming the first company in the world to be awarded certification under the Aluminium Stewardship Initiative (ASI), the highest internationally recognized standard for robust environmental, social and governance practices across the aluminium lifecycle of production, use and recycling.
The ASI is a global, multi-stakeholder, non-profit standards setting and certification organization that aims to define globally applicable standards for sustainability performance and material chain-of-custody for the aluminium value chain, promote measurable and continual improvements in the key environmental, social and governance impacts of aluminium production, use and recycling, and to develop a credible assurance and certification system that both mitigates the risks of non-conformity with ASI standards and minimises barriers to broad scale implementation.
What this certification does is follow an independent third party audit and covers a range of operations across the aluminium value chain, from bauxite mining to alumina refining, aluminium smelting, the creation of value added products, transformation and recycling, and associated activities.
According to Rio Tinto Aluminium vice president sales and marketing and ASI Board member Tolga Egrilmeze, there will be a “growing demand for ASI certified products from end users and customers seeking to demonstrate a responsible supply chain.”
“Rio Tinto is proud to take this pioneering step as the first company to achieve ASI certification, which continues our industry leadership on sustainability and responsible production as we work closely with customers to meet their needs,” says Rio Tinto Aluminium chief executive Alf Barrios. “We launched the first certified low carbon aluminium, RenewAl, in 2016 and produce some of the best quality, lowest carbon footprint aluminium in the world at our Canadian smelters.” He explains the importance of this move by saying, “Responsibly produced aluminium has a key role to play in driving human progress, as a material of choice to reduce carbon and increase recycling across a wide range of end products from food packaging to buildings, planes, cars, mobile phones and computers.”
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