New research commissioned by EarthWorks and done by the Institute for Sustainable Futures argues that demand for complex minerals needed by the rise in electric cars should come from recycled or be verified by certification schemes, such as IRMA.
In February 2019, IRMA’s Director of Standards and Assurance participated in a workshop on how voluntary standards might contribute to a more responsible mineral supply chain for mined materials being produced in Liberia.
Photo Credit: Lisa Sumi
Loretta Williams, chairwoman of First Nations Women Advocating Responsible Mining and Calvin Sandborn, QC, legal director of the Environmental Law Centre at the University of Victoria call on Premier John Horgan to act now to protect the workers and communities below tailings dams.
Photo Credit: Jonathan Hayward / The Canadian Press.
About five years ago, both B.C. and Brazil got dramatic warnings of the danger that tailings dams pose. In 2014, the Mount Polley mine dam collapsed, creating one of Canada’s most epic environmental disasters. Only 15 months later, a tailings dam in Mariana, Brazil, collapsed, wiping out a neighbourhood, killing 19 and poisoning a vast watershed. Fish literally leaped out of the river to flap on the banks, trying to escape lethal effluent.
IRMA Steering Committee member Payal Sampat of Earthworks talks with the Brazilian business news magazine Exame about IRMA, and how initiatives like IRMA can spur best practices in the industry such as dry tailings disposal.
Photo Credit: Exame.
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“Vale’s Brumadinho mining waste dam failure is all the more tragic because the mining industry knows how to prevent them, yet failed to act.” — Payal Sampat, Earthworks.
Photo Credit: BBC.
The Independent Catholic News reports that: Hundreds of people are missing, 37 people have been confirmed dead and more than 24,000 people have been evacuated from the Brazilian town hit by a deadly mudslide unleashed by a ruptured mining dam, as rains raised fears a second dam could collapse. . .
Payal Sampat, the Mining Director of our US counterpart organisation, Earthworks, said: “Vale’s Brumadinho mining waste dam failure is all the more tragic because the mining industry knows how to prevent them, yet failed to act. 200 people are missing and some presumed dead because Vale and the rest of global mining industry haven’t adopted the Mount Polley Independent Expert Panel’s recommendations made in response to a similar catastrophic mining waste dam failure in 2014. These recommendations have been globally recognized, including by the United Nations Environment Programme’s 2017 assessment of tailings dams failures, and by the multi-sector Initiative for Responsible Mining Assurance standard. Until these recommendations are adopted and independently verified, preventable mining disasters will continue to occur wherever the mining industry operates.
Tiffany & Co, an IRMA founding member, to share diamond provenance with customers.
Leading American jeweler Tiffany & Co. announced a new initiative Wednesday to ensure transparency in its diamond sourcing. “Tiffany & Co. will begin sharing with our customers the provenance, meaning region or countries of origin, of our newly sourced, individually registered diamonds – a significant step for diamond transparency,” said CEO Alessandro Bogliolo, as the company launched the Diamond Source Initiative.
. . . Each Tiffany diamond is engraved with a tiny, invisible serial number using a laser. That helps to make it unique and traceable to each owner.
Andy Hart, the company’s vice president of diamond and jewelry supply, says the best way to ensure responsible sourcing is to know where a diamond came from.
. . . “We were early supporters of the Kimberley Process and helped found the Initiative for Responsible Mining Assurance (IRMA), an organization making significant strides in establishing global mining standards.”
WWF Germany recently published a report, Boom in Raw Materials: Between Profits and Losses, which offers one of the first concrete rebuttals from a major environmental group against the notion that industry actions alone are enough to move the global industrial mining sector towards greater responsibility.
Overall the report says companies need to take the following actions:
In the sections of the report calling for corporate action, the authors point primarily to the Initiative for Responsible Mining Assurance (IRMA) as a credible, multi-stakeholder-driven option for assurance of more responsible industrial mining at the mine site level. . . IRMA was cited throughout the report as it is the only current certification system that offers a comprehensive standard offering one-stop coverage of the full range of environmental and social issues related to the impacts of industrial-scale mines.
Mine sites can use the self-assessment tool to prepare for independent auditing of achievement, scheduled to begin in 2019, and also provide feedback to IRMA to improve its certification system.
Led by leading companies Anglo American, ArcelorMittal, Microsoft and Tiffany & Co — and after a full decade of consultation among large numbers of stakeholders from the mining industry, organized labor, nonprofits, impacted communities and businesses — a global Standard for Responsible Mining was released today.
Multi-sector effort to certify social and environmental performance at mine sites globally.
TORONTO, June 28 2018 /CNW/ – Today, the Initiative for Responsible Mining Assurance (IRMA) released the Standard for Responsible Mining, a precedent-setting global certification program for industrial-scale mine sites. With growing awareness and demand for ecologically and socially-responsible products jewelers, electronics businesses, auto makers and others have sought assurances that the minerals they purchase are mined responsibly. The Standard seeks to emulate for industrial-scale mine sites what has been done with certification programs in organic agriculture, responsible forestry and sustainable fisheries. An online IRMA Engagement Map was also launched today that will allow responsible producers and purchasers of minerals to demonstrate their commitment to a responsible minerals value chain and make contact to enable business relationships to develop.
