Facing growing pressure from clients demanding more sustainable mining credentials, Chilean copper giant Codelco is giving itself a green makeover by investing in electric buses, cactus nurseries, and recycling.
Based in Santiago, the state-owned company — and the world’s largest copper producer — is focusing its green push on its El Teniente mine, located 75km south of the capital. It’s partly a public relations drive to bolster Codelco’s ESG metrics, which have become a key focus among customers calling for greater traceability and sustainability of copper used in electric vehicles and other technologies.
To that end, a fleet of roughly 100 electric buses — converted from diesel — now brings workers from the nearby city of Rancagua. Scrap metal, such as bolts and meshes, are recovered and recycled for use at the El Teniente mine.
Coldeco is also collaborating with the government on a nursery and research centre to foster native species, including threatened local cactus plants, and regenerate areas damaged by tailing dams.
Ivan Quiroz, head of the Mediterranean Ecosystems Research Centre, says he has a mandate with the company to produce one million native plants.
“We want to help this recovery of tailings with different species . . . and so we must start by stabilising things so that the material doesn’t run away, and add things that can grow and extract any heavy metals,” Quiroz says.
The fleet of electric buses is also expected to save around 3,000 tonnes of CO2 emissions each year.
“People are increasingly insisting on this,” Codelco CEO Ruben Alvarado tells Reuters, citing certifications such as ‘The Copper Mark’, which is meant to reflect the sustainability credentials of mining companies.
However, the real environmental impact of the measures remains unclear. Copper mining is a highly water-intensive practice, and waste tailings often contain heavy metals. Light pollution from mines has also been found to disrupt the mountainous Andean region known for its clear night skies.
“The benefit is still marginal,” Patricia Munoz, economist at the mining engineering department of the University of Santiago, says. “But at least it’s a starting point.”
Meanwhile, Andres Music, general manager of the El Teniente mine, acknowledged that some of the measures brought additional expenses.
“But we believe that as long as we keep doing it, we will make our process more efficient, and we will also take care of those environmental liabilities,” he says.
Codelco’s copper output has been sliding in recent years, with last year’s production of 1.32 million tonnes representing a 25-year low. Delays at key mines, accidents, and management missteps were behind much of 2023’s slump that exacerbated a worldwide copper shortfall, and in turn pumped global copper prices to a record high.
However, production is expected to pick up in the second half of this year.
“We are working so output begins a long-term growth trend from 2024,” the company told Reuters in July, adding it had boosted “intensive” monitoring of operations and targeted improvements at key mines.
Write to Oliver Gray at Mining.com.au
Images: iStock
