BRAZILIAN ALUMINUM - solutions for sustainable living

BRAZILIAN ALUMINUM SOLUTIONS FOR SUSTAINABLE LIVING 46 THE INDUSTRY’S ENVIRONMENTAL PERFORMANCE The industry’s environmental performance In 2014, ABAL launched an initiative for consolidating environmental performance indicators for the industries in this sector, which was intended to broaden another action then aimed for the primary aluminum plants. Gathering, consolidating and assessing the major environmental performance indicators on a periodic and standardized fashion would enable achieving three targets:  support companies in mapping their performance towards the average for each segment;  communicate the outcome to stakeholders;  advise on positioning the sector before the governments and the society. Although it might seem a simple task, it is an effort posing a number of challenges on which the Association and those members of the Sustainability Technical Committee have jointly worked. Among them are:  The several production phases (i.e. mining, refining, primary aluminum production, processing and secondary production) are at different levels of maturity in their environmental management system, which can be seen from in the level of participation in the survey.  Securing data confidentiality for those segments still having a low number of companies or businesses of very distinct size.  Lack of skilled personnel given the now shrunk capacity of the sector.  The sense of how much those consolidated indicators may account for the average performance of the given segment. During 2017, the initiative has started its third yearly cycle, when data relating to 2016 will then be gathered. The outcome shown herein refers to year 2015. It is worth noting that the figures shown were consolidated per production phase, and they account for the data the companies have provided, with no further review made by ABAL or any external entity. 5 The aluminum industry in Brazil realizes that improving its environmental management even more is required. All its production steps shall be effective in using natural resources and minimizing waste and effluents. It is expected that the environmental indicators, which are shown herein for the first time, might help speed up our industry’s environmental progress.