Quantities of environmental and economic benefits
The waste products arising from Boliden's mining, concentrating and refining operations at the smelters must be reused, recycled or deposited responsibly and correctly. The statutory limit values for substance content in both waste and products change over time. It is, therefore, vital that we remain on the cutting edge of the work being done to determine how to best handle the waste since we know that responsible and efficient waste management generates both environmental and economic benefits.
Eco-cycle endeavours
We know that what is waste for one party may be a raw material for another, either within the Group or outside it. In the same way as Boliden takes delivery of other metal companies’ waste products, from which we, in turn, extract metals, we also send waste products to other companies for extraction. The combined effect of this is that the amount of waste that ultimately has to be sent to landfill can be minimised. Our primary objective is to identify internal recycling or landfill solutions for waste products due to the general principle that they are sent to the production facility best able to process them.
If a waste product is sent to an external party the process is ultimately regulated by extensive legislation. But we have also developed our own routines for monitoring and following up on the receiving party’s processing operations to ensure that their waste processing is acceptable from a health and environmental viewpoint. No remuneration for processing the waste is paid until the processing work is completed.