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Overview

At Anglo American, we have a clear Purpose: to re-imagining mining to improve people’s lives.

我们提供必威体育i888的产品是必不可少的future of society, particularly as we strive to build a more sustainable, equitable and decarbonised world.

Global demand for minerals and metals is expected to rise substantially in the coming decades to meet this challenge. This reinforces the importance of being able to provide the goods and services society needs to grow, while managing impacts and delivering positive social, economic, and environmental outcomes.

This challenge is at the heart of the circular economy which looks to eliminate waste in all its forms, making the most of what we have, natural resources included. It advocates re-using, redesigning and, sharing, repairing, refurbishing, re-manufacturing, and recycling – consuming fewer resources in the first place and using them for longer.

At a more fundamental level, it is about creating new models for businesses to promote and incentivise efficiency and ultimately, decouple growth from resource use.

The circular economy means designing waste out of our entire value chain and creating a system of net positivity to ultimately protect the Earth’s finite supply of natural resources. It is more than recycling, it is more than a project or an initiative, it is a new way of thinking that we are striving to adopt.

This aspiration is in line with our ambition to become a materials solutions provider.

Our approach to circularity

The circular economy is changing the way we look at our business, in three ways:

– In our operations, we seek to optimise the use of resources, eliminating physical waste and maximising process efficiency. We aim to achieve a neutral or even net positive impact on the environment. In turn, this helps us to create thriving communities, one of the three Global Sustainability Pillars of our Sustainable Mining Plan.

– Throughout our value chains and across our Marketing business, we work to maximise the value of our products during their full lifecycle. We also support the development of technological innovation that can serve to advance this goal.

– Through holistic business transformation, we are growing our business in ways that adapt to and shape the change around us. Circularity is one of the lenses that we use to support our journey from mining and metals company to material solutions provider.

As we gain a deeper understanding of circularity and how it intersects with our business, we are working to embed circular principles into our processes and build a culture that fully embraces circularity.

Our initiatives

Many of our flagship initiatives are already circular in nature. For example:

– Our FutureSmart MiningTMprogramme is delivering step-change innovations in technology, digitalisation, and sustainability to transform the future footprint of mining across the entire value chain

– Our P101 transformational asset productivity programme is eliminating wasted capacity across our assets and processes, continually pushing beyond benchmark performance

– Our land rehabilitation efforts employ top-soil cultivation and water re-use to prioritise the repurposing of end-of-life mines as part of a broader remit to support local communities.

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Other examples of our approach to circularity in action include our ongoing portfolio transition towards metals and minerals that support a greener, cleaner, more sustainable world; our efforts to reduce energy consumption and intensity; and our increased use of renewable energy.

Building an internal circular culture and CircuLab

We recognise that building a culture of circular economy thinking across the business will be a key part of our success. Following our first ‘Circular Economy Day’ in January 2021, we have designed a programme of online learning and support so that colleagues everywhere can explore the concept and how they can apply it in whatever role they perform.

In early 2021, to accelerate our contribution to the circular economy, we launched CircuLab, our internal circular economy incubator. The project aims to ignite and embed circular thinking into the way we do business by helping innovators within Anglo American find circular opportunities and turn them into reality. CircuLab provides resources and a platform for anyone in the business with an idea that moves our business towards circularity the opportunity to test if it can thrive. Any employee can submit an idea, no matter how big or small, mature, or nascent their thinking. All submissions get graded according to a set of nine criteria including feasibility, replicability and alignment with the Sustainable Mining Plan goals and circular economy principles. The ideas deemed appropriate for CircuLab join the first of two 30-day sprints supported by a mentor and dedicated resources to develop the idea into a business case.

All participants, regardless of whether their idea is accepted into the programme, become part of the CircuLab community. The community has an ongoing calendar of activities, starting in 2021 with a Global Forum to share knowledge on slag re-use. Slag is the left-over material from the smelting process, and we currently have projects exploring its potential use for construction or fertiliser in Chile, Brazil and South Africa. The forum connected innovators with the subject matter experts leading the current efforts to catalyse innovation.

At its core, CircuLab is about encouraging employees to think about new ways to approach materials that would normally be considered waste as something of value. It democratises innovation and sustainability by empowering our people to find circular opportunities and design ways to remove waste from our operations.

By harnessing and directing the insights and energy of innovators across our business, we can create incredible opportunities for our people and our business, to take us even further in the transition to the circular economy.

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