Sherritt
Sherritt International Corporation
Which of the 17 SDGs is your organization working towards and actively promoting?
Please describe the actions/objectives towards achieving the SDGs that you have selected above.
3 Good Health and Wellbeing: Healthy, happy communities and employees make for a successful and stable operating environment. Sherritt has a responsibility as a local employer in Canada, Madagascar and Cuba to ensure employees return home from work safely every day. Some actions include developing a suite of global Fatality Prevention Standards and implementing TSM’s Safety and Health Protocol.
5 Gender Equality: Sherritt is committed to advancing stronger gender representation at the board and senior management levels. We are also working to develop, train and promote women from diverse backgrounds throughout the company. In our communities, we will support education and careers for girls and women, as well as safety and economic empowerment. In 2017, Sherritt ran internal focus groups to better understand our current state in regards to D&I at opportunities to improve. We are now building a multi-year plan to address those results.
6 Clean Water and Sanitation: Water is essential for life, but is also a requirement for natural resource extraction and processing activities. Sherritt works hard at water management and ensuring local communities have a healthy supply and sanitation. The nickel we produce is used as a key input for sustainable water storage and distribution infrastructure around the world.
7 Affordable and Clean Energy: Sherritt seeks out opportunities not only to produce clean energy that supports our host countries’ needs, but also to lessen the impacts of our energy use. In Cuba, we are the largest independent power producer.
8 Decent Work and Economic Growth: Sharing the economic benefits of our activities with employees, host communities and countries, business partners and investors is not only responsible but essential to our growth strategy. We believe in supporting local employment and procurement in countries in which we operate, and this is evidenced in our results.
15 Life on Land: Sherritt’s approach to environmental management is to avoid impacts wherever we reasonably can, and to minimize, manage and remediate those that occur. Our award-winning approach to biodiversity management at Ambatovy, and our focus on sustainable mining and refining positions Sherritt as a global leader in this area.
Please specify the impact of your organization’s actions on the SDGs that you have selective above.
3 Good Health and Wellbeing: Over a three-year period, Sherritt’s total recordable injury frequency (TRIF) decreased by 33%, while our lost time injury frequency (LTIF) decreased by 14%. We support local disaster relief in the days and weeks after storms, most recently Cyclones Enawo and Ava in Madagascar and Hurricane Irma in Cuba. Examples of our past support include supplying potable water, materials to rebuild homes, and equipment for community repairs. In early 2018, Sherritt announced a three-year partnership with UNICEF on road safety for youth in Cuba.
5 Gender Equality: Sherritt has 25% female Board of Directors. Sherritt joined Catalyst in 2017 and signed the Catalyst Accord 2022 and have committed to improving gender diversity at all levels. We are proudly supporting the inaugural International Women in Resources Mentorship Programme and remain committed to the 30% Club of Canada.
6 Clean Water and Sanitation: Sherritt supports regional cooperation for environmental stewardship. Our Fort Saskatchewan operation in Alberta is actively involved in the Capital Region Water Management Framework Advisory Committee. The goal of the Framework is to improve the quality of water in the North Saskatchewan River.
Erosion and silting of the Mangoro River, from which we draw water for mining operations in Madagascar, is occurring. In 2016, we began collaborating with ProDAIRE. This collaboration, which also involves local villages, will bring greater focus to reforestation and the prevention of riverbank erosion in the impacted areas so that everyone, not just Ambatovy, can benefit from improved management of the river and surrounding area.
7 Affordable and Clean Energy: Our greenhouse gas emissions dropped by 4% over the previous year, thanks in large part due to the investment that was made at Moa, Cuba for a new acid plant, which, in addition to making the operation more efficient and self-sufficient, also reduced the need to burn additional fossil fuels. At the Ambatovy operation, we piloted an electric vehicle program at the plant site to transport employees safely without diesel emissions. For many years, our Fort Site in Alberta has used site bicycles for employee transport on site.
8 Decent Work and Economic Growth: During the year, through community investment, taxes and royalties, local procurement and wages, we contributed more than $840 million in economic benefits to host communities and countries in 2017. Sherritt and its joint-venture employees reported over 6,000 volunteer hours in our local communities.
15 Life on Land: The foundation of Ambatovy’s biodiversity work was designed by the Business and Biodiversity Offsets Programme (BBOP), a multi-stakeholder initiative that seeks to develop best practice in biodiversity protection for large greenfield projects. Ambatovy’s approach to conservation also conforms to International Finance Corporation (IFC) Performance Standards on Environmental and Social Sustainability. Ambatovy’s performance has been the recipient of awards, including the Nedbank Capital Sustainable Business Award.
At our Moa, Cuba mine site, Sherritt has spent many years rehabilitating and reforesting the nearby Alejandro de Humboldt National Park, a UNESCO World Heritage site.
Please describe your goals/action plans to advance the SDGs that you have selective above in the next 5 years.
Sherritt recently launched five-year sustainability goals to drive our sustainability strategy, focus our business efforts, and deliver tangible results to improve sustainability performance.
These strategic goals will incorporate our external commitments and focus on areas that advance and protect our interests, and support Operational Excellence.
The goals are as follows:
| Goal 1
|
Achieve Level A requirements in Towards Sustainable Mining (TSM) protocols across all operations
Towards Sustainable Mining (TSM) is a site-level management system initiative that focuses on performance areas that are key business risks for the natural resources’ sector, including: health and safety, tailings management, stakeholder engagement, crisis management, energy and greenhouse gas emissions, biodiversity conservation, human rights, and water. |
| Goal 2
|
Strengthen safety culture, behaviour and performance
Our workforce is our greatest asset and we will continue to take the steps necessary to build the desired interdependent safety culture where every worker understands and accepts that they are responsible for their own safety and the safety of everyone else around them. We will create a workplace that delivers zero harm. |
| Goal 3
|
Improve water, energy and emissions management across operations
One of the primary areas of focus of the natural resources’ sector is to prevent adverse environmental impacts and to enhance resource efficiency. Water, energy and air quality are three priority environmental aspects of our business that any mining, refining or oil and gas operation can improve to reduce impacts and increase the efficient and responsible use of resources. |
| Goal 4 | Create community benefit footprints that support local priorities and the SDGs
Social license is built and maintained, in large part, by contributing to socioeconomic development and protecting the environment in areas surrounding operations. To ensure our social license endures, we are creating community benefit footprints at our sites that aim to align our activities with local needs. |
| Goal 5 | Be recognized as a ‘supplier of choice’ for responsibly produced, high-quality products
Increasingly, natural resources’ companies are being pressured by customers and the downstream supply chain to demonstrate that their metals and products are produced responsibly, with due regard for human rights, safe working conditions and sustainable environmental management. Being recognized as a supplier of choice by consumer products companies – and other current and potential customers – will be an outcome of demonstrating that we not only produce high-quality products but also have a range of leading-practice standards and processes in place to govern our sustainability commitments and performance. |
| Goal 6
|
Improve diversity at all levels throughout the company
Diversity is an issue and opportunity across society, and particularly relevant to the natural resources’ sector because of the historically low proportion of women and other people of differing backgrounds and abilities in our industry. We know that we will become a stronger, more innovative and resilient company as we continue to attract a spectrum of people of different cultural backgrounds, genders, ages and life experience to our company. |
Does your organization engage in any partnerships to advance the SDGs?
Sherritt is committed to being the ‘Partner of Choice’. We take a multi-stakeholder approach to business and sustainable development. Due to Sherritt’s size, we have to rely on joint ventures and project financing from a range of lending institutions to conduct business. We have learned and embrace the power of compromise. Over the years, Sherritt has been fortunate enough to secure partnerships with a range of international NGOs — including WWF, Conservation International, BirdLife, UNICEF, UNDP, Search for Common Ground, among many others — on environmental and social development initiatives. We leverage their expertise and experience to develop solutions and manage our risks and impacts in ways that benefit a range of stakeholders, not just our company. We continue to take a progressive view towards stakeholder engagement.
How are you communicating and measuring your impact towards the SDGs?
Sherritt reports on the SDGs that align with our overall strategy in our public sustainability report: http://sustainability.sherritt.com/2017/our-approach/content#sdg
Launched this year, Sherritt’s 5 Year Goals are also aligned with our SDG priorities and progress against them will be reported publically moving forward.
Learn more about our sustainability performance at sustainability.sherritt.com or in the attached video, which contains our 2017 sustainability highlights.