Baar, 17.04.2019

The encouraging and disturbing aspects of Glencore's latest Sustainability Report

Glencore published its ninth Sustainability Report earlier this week; this showed both encouraging aspects, such as fewer C02 emissions, but also disturbing ones,13 employees having lost their lives while working for the commodity-trading and mining group over the course of 2018.

 

As to these emissions, the company was able to report that, compared with 2017, there had been a reduction of nine per cent, with more precise figures relating to the Paris Agreement in this area due to be published in 2020. The company claimed that was “on course” in such matters and that, by next year, it hoped it would have reduced its CO2 emissions by at least 5 per cent when compared with those of 2016.

 

Speaking in his role as a representative of the Carbon Delta climate research and advisory company, Phanos Hadjikyriakou said that the amount of CO2 and other greenhouse gases emitted by Glencore amounted to 0.6 per cent of all global emissions, the equivalent of seven times that of all direct CO2 emissions emanating from Switzerland, hence it could be seen how important the responsibility of Glencore and other such companies was in reducing those of greenhouse gases.

 

One other matter which Glencore considers of utmost importance is the health and safety of its employees, the company pleased to be able to report a continuing fall in the number of those employees who suffered from an industrial accident or disease. Figures for the years 2018 indicated there had been 32 of these, compared with 46 the previous year.

 

However, when it came to work-related deaths, the CEO of the Baar-based company, Ivan Glasenberg expressed his deep sadness that 18 people had lost their lives while working for the company over the course of 2018, up from nine in 2017.

 

So far this year, alas, eight employees have already lost their lives. In order to reduce these numbers, as company spokeswoman, Sarah Antenore, explained, efforts were being made to improve safety, not least in investing in new technology to help avoid collisions in mining operations. As to how these employees lost their lives, she said it was not company practice to disclose the precise circumstances.

 

This report is based on an article by Livio Brandenberg.