Sustainability

Lithium’s role in a sustainable world

Rio Tinto contributes to a more sustainable world by providing materials essential for human progress in a sustainable way. Part of that is how we—as custodians of natural and mineral resources—extract full-value and manage waste from mining operations. We are finding better ways to provide the materials the world needs.

Jadar: Building a sustainable lithium mine

We are committed to forming respectful, lasting, and mutually beneficial relationships with landowners, the local community, the Serbian government, and other stakeholders—now and through the life of the operation.

Minimizing our environmental impact

We know that our work, by its very nature, impacts the environment, and we seek to minimize and mitigate any adverse impacts from our operations. Environmental Impact Assessment Studies of the future underground mine, concentrate processing plant, and industrial waste storage are being carried out. These studies allow us to build a comprehensive picture of the environment before mining begins, predict the impacts—including cumulative impacts of our future operations—and define measures to minimize or eliminate them.

As part of our mitigation measures, we have already committed to investing $100M in environmental protection measures.

Overlooking the Jadar valley
 

Sustainability through innovation

When developed, Jadar will be a modern industrial operation, for a sustainable world.
 

Learn more  ›

12


environmental studies completed

23,000+


analyses of soil, water, air, and noise

2,000


chemical tests

Safety first

There is nothing more important than the safety of our workforce. We strive for a zero-harm work environment and believe that all incidents and injuries are preventable. We identify, manage and where possible, eliminate risks.

Our team has worked more than 2 million safe working hours. As of May 2023, we have gone five years without a lost time injury at work.

Reducing our water use

We're designing Jadar to maximize the reuse of process water and minimize the total volume of water that needs to be treated. The portion of water not reused will be treated in a state of the art wastewater facility. Excess water from the process is treated to meet all specifications required by environmental regulations in Serbia and is at the same or better quality before being reintroduced into waterways.

Responsible waste management

Our Jadar mine and processing facility will generate two types of waste:

  • Rock material from the underground mine from which jadarite cannot be extracted
  • Industrial waste produced when processing jadarite

The waste rock from the mine will be placed in a waste rock dump adjacent to mine shafts. The waste is a combination of three major, individual residue streams produced from different stages of processing. Approximately 30% of the total process residue streams produced are returned to the underground mine as part of the backfill mix. This waste storage area will include a state-of-the-art system for monitoring the air, water, and soil quality, to ensure that we minimize and manage potential impacts to the environment. And, we will progressively rehabilitate the land in this area.

Electric car in green landscape

Lithium: Powering a cleaner future

Lithium is part of our portfolio of materials essential to a low-carbon future including technologies such as the electrification of transport, large-scale batteries, and energy storage. Double digit demand growth is forecast over the next decade.

We are proud to be part of a better environment—from mine to manufacturing.