Product Stewardship

At Inco, we are doing our best to ensure the health and safety of our people and the environment where our products are made, shipped, used, recycled and disposed of. Says Damian D'Aguiar, Inco's Manager of Product Stewardship, "Being responsible for our products from the mine to the shipping gate and onward simply makes economic, environmental and social sense."

Certainly, product stewardship benefits our business. "The mining of nickel continues to be our main focus, of course," says D'Aguiar. "However, eliminating waste and recycling what we produce is increasingly important to our bottom line." Inco's emphasis on product stewardship is also driven by the requirement to comply with government and environmental regulations such as those involving the transportation of hazardous waste.

The needs, expectations and demands of our customers as well as consumers have also contributed to our focus on product stewardship. "Environmental sustainability is a goal more and more of our customers are pursuing," explains D'Aguiar. "As part of that objective, they insist on doing business with companies that are also interested in protecting the environment and minimizing potentially adverse impacts on employees, customers, communities and the environment. Inco is such a company."

  2004 PERFORMANCE HIGHLIGHTS

• Processed over 30,000 tonnes of external recycled nickel-containing material at our Ontario and Manitoba Operations.
• Recovered approximately one million troy ounces of platinum-group metals as well as gold and silver at our Acton Refinery in England.
• Processed approximately 68,400 tonnes of waste and produced 26,180 tonnes of metal from waste material at Inmetco, our U.S.-based metals recycling subsidiary.
• Developed a primer on product stewardship for our global sales and marketing network, thereby enhancing awareness of our product stewardship program, issues and priorities.
• Introduced a formal product stewardship audit program to ensure that effective management systems are in place on product handling, storage and security to ensure the integrity and safe handling of Inco products.
• Posted Inco's product Material Safety Data Sheets (MSDS) electronically.

  2005 GOALS

• Complete our formal product stewardship audit and extend the program internationally to ensure that we are in compliance with government and environmental regulations wherever we operate in the world; develop performance measures related to our audit process.
• Complete the translation of all our online MSDS into Spanish and Chinese.