Borax’s first priority is to protect people – the people who work at and live near our operations, and the people who use our products. In 2003, we achieved our best workplace safety record in company history. That record was recognized by our parent company, Rio Tinto, through its 2003 Chief Executive Safety Award, signifying the best safety performance among Rio Tinto’s nearly 80 worldwide mining operations. Work continues to make occupational and product safety a priority to protect employees, neighbors and customers.

We surveyed these and other stakeholders last year to track progress against baseline research in 2000. Results demonstrate that our communications efforts succeeded in raising awareness and understanding of Borax’s sustainable development program by nearly 50 percent internally, and by 300 percent among external audiences. To invite more direct feedback and rigorous evaluation, we held our first Stakeholder Engagement Forum in March of 2004. Click here to read more.

Our plans to expand our principal mining and refining operation also generated considerable comment. While nearly 400 employees, union leaders, neighbors and state elected officials wrote letters to support governmental approval of those plans, a few community members registered their opposition based on concerns about air quality. We responded with air quality monitoring data and independent analysis to confirm that our operations pose no health risks to our neighbors.

Our track record of meeting or exceeding environmental regulations helped us gain approval for those expansion plans – which are critical to our ability to remain competitive. To meet growing demand for boric acid, we built a new plant in Argentina that recycles waste material and uses it as feedstock, and ratified plans to expand our plant in the United States in a way that lowers emissions and increases productivity.

We continue to go beyond government regulations to improve our environmental performance – maintaining ISO 14001 certification of our environmental management systems, establishing a climate change policy and action plan to voluntarily reduce greenhouse gas emissions, and developing new applications that help customers lower energy use and emissions, among other efforts. Although we failed to meet specific water and fuel efficiency targets in our primary mine in 2003, we did reduce overall fuel use by five percent in 2003, and lowered water use by 16 percent since 1999.

Borax’s financial performance declined slightly in 2003, following global economic trends. We did, however, create value through new borate technologies and markets. Results of a global salary review show that the company continues to create value through competitive salaries and benefits for its employees as well. We are also proud to contribute one percent of our pre-tax profits to sustain communities surrounding our operations.

Demonstrating our products’ contribution to sustainability was another company priority. Last year, Borax completed Life Cycle Assessments to capture the environmental aspects of the majority of its products. These data help our customers meet consumers’ growing demand for more complete information about their purchases. The company continues its work with the European Union to complete risk assessments on borates to ensure their safe handling and use.

The guiding principle of Borax’s Sustainable Development program is continuous improvement. Future goals include improving how we integrate sustainability into the full range of our business processes – from sales and marketing to recruitment and training; how we make a compelling business case for sustainable development among employees and customers; and how we move beyond merely reporting program results to involving stakeholders in shaping the program itself.