Our Approach To Sustainability

For BHP Billiton, sustainable development is about ensuring our business remains viable and contributes lasting benefits to society through the consideration of social, environmental, ethical and economic aspects in all that we do.

Working through complex operational issues associated with our operations has highlighted environmental and social performance as a critical success factor for the Company. We are well aware of the costs of getting it wrong; but more importantly, we recognise the value that can be created by getting it right. Consequently, we adopt a holistic approach to business strategy, seeking to realise value for all our stakeholders through a sustainable business philosophy.

Line managers have ultimate accountability for ensuring our businesses contribute to sustainable development and move towards our aspirational goal of Zero Harm. This is implemented through a number of processes, such as our HSEC Management Standards (PDF 148 KB) and our Guide to Business Conduct.

Our Vision

Our vision for sustainable development is to be the company of choice — creating sustainable value for shareholders, employees, contractors, suppliers, customers, business partners and host communities. Central to our vision is our aspirational goal of Zero Harm to people, our host communities and the environment.

Zero Harm means:

We aspire to create a workplace that is injury, illness and incident free. We seek to adopt a precautionary approach to minimise and, where possible, eliminate our environmental impacts over time.

Company of choice means:

Being selected by shareholders as a valued investment, based on strong financial performance and sound governance processes.
Being preferred by employees for providing a safe, healthy and equitable workplace and caring about the communities in which we live.
Being preferred by the communities in which we operate for our contribution to sustainable community wellbeing.
Being preferred by our business partners — customers, suppliers, contractors, governments and joint venture partners — as a committed and reliable partner in delivering sustainable value.

Our emphasis on sustainable value means we have the willingness to invest for the future while ensuring we deliver value in the shorter term.

Our Strategy

BHP Billiton is the world's largest diversified resources company. The Company aims to be diversified in terms of our markets and countries of operation, and this enhances the stability of our cash flows and capacity to invest and grow throughout the business and commodity price cycles. This stability also enables us to take a longer-term, precautionary approach to all aspects of our business, including financial, social and environmental perspectives, improving our ability to deliver value for all our key stakeholders.

Our sustainable development strategy comprises two dimensions – the business dimension and the sustainability dimension – that together contribute to bottom line performance.

Business Dimensions

The business dimension represents traditional contributors to a financially successful and competitive business, recognising that without a profitable business we are unable to contribute to the broader goals of sustainability. This dimension includes:

Business excellence and customer focus.
Portfolio diversity.
Deep inventory of growth projects across all Customer Sector Groups, including greenfield and brownfield projects, as well as appropriate merger and acquisition activities.
Quality, long-life assets.

Sustainability Dimension

Our bottom line performance is, however, dependent upon ensuring access to resources and gaining and maintaining a licence to operate and grow. Maximising bottom line performance is about recognising the value protection and value add to be achieved through performance in non-financial dimensions - or sustainability dimensions, such as:

Aspiring towards Zero Harm to people, our host communities and the environment.
Ensuring effective governance and risk management processes are in place to ensure a precautionary approach is taken to achieving business outcomes.
Recognising the need to be socially responsible and contribute to sustainable community development.
Ensuring the broader economic contributions of our operations are effectively injected into the regions where we operate.

A useful metaphor we apply to our sustainable development strategy is illustrated below. Together, our two strategic dimensions combine to form a structure similar to that of a natural diamond. The diamond’s inherently stable structure is created by the strength in each dimension that contributes equally to an even stronger, stable and more valuable whole and is symbolic of our total business approach to sustainable development.

Working with business partners

Our Sustainable Development Vision and Strategy are underpinned by our Sustainable Development Policy and HSEC Management Standards, which are applied to BHP Billiton sites and operations throughout the world. These include:

Majority owned and/or operated and controlled facilities and activities (from exploration and planning through to closure and rehabilitation).
Development projects, mergers, acquisitions and divestments.
Activities by contractors on BHP Billiton sites or under BHP Billiton management (including construction activities prior to hand-over).

Where BHP Billiton does not have operational responsibility but has an equity stake, or where significant BHP Billiton assets are involved, we make all reasonable efforts to promote our approach and make our HSEC Management Standards are made available to the operator, so that comparable HSEC Management Standards may be applied. The resolution of conflicts presented by the implementation of these Standards must be consistent with the principles of the BHP Billiton Charter.

Measuring Progress

Our Sustainable Development Road Map is a strategy map that provides a contextual framework for how we measure our progress on our journey towards sustainable development.

We encourage our managers to place their decisions in the context of this Road Map and question how they can better improve the sustainability performance of their operations.

The Road Map seeks to illustrate that there are three contexts to consider when making decisions that influence our ability to contribute to sustainable development:

Operational level — seek out leading sustainability practices.
Strategic level — identify opportunities to drive sustainable value creation.
Commodity level — demonstrate stewardship by building partnerships across the life cycles of our products to deliver broader business and societal returns.

We encourage our operations to strive for excellence in areas where they perceive the greatest relevance to their stakeholders and business. This approach recognises that there may not always be a need for operations to excel in all aspects of sustainability. While each stage in maturity is distinct, the requirements of the previous stage must be maintained and built upon to progress in maturity.

BHP Billiton Sustainable Development Road Map

	Maturity Phase	Indicative Milestones
1.	Compliance What are our mandatory obligations? Are we meeting them?	Compliance system in place for health, safety, environmental, social, ethical and economic performance. Demonstrated compliance with relevant laws.
2.	Risk Management Where are our exposures? How can they be managed and minimised? We establish systems; measure, benchmark and review our performance; and develop strategies to continually improve performance.	Risks identified, assessed, prioritised and managed. Risk-based management systems in place. Strategies to improve performance identified and implementation plans developed. Stakeholder engagement process implemented Non-financial performance measurement and reporting systems implemented.
3.	Responsibility Is sustainability part of the way our business lives and breathes? We develop a culture where strategic thinking and continuous improvement are internalised so that quality, efficiency and innovation become business as usual.	Health, safety, environmental, social, economic and ethical aspects integral to business planning and employee remuneration. Sustainability reports verified by a third party. We advocate the benefits of sustainability to our industry and supply chain. We advocate responsible business practice.
4.	Innovation What are the strategic business opportunities arising from our achievements? We benefit from actions taken to reduce our environmental and social impact by leveraging strategic, innovation or market advantages.	Socially responsible investment attracted. Spin-off technology or other business opportunity implemented. Market access or penetration increased. Business or products repositioned in marketplace.
5.	Strategic Alignment How can we integrate aspects of sustainability into our business? We are positioned to adapt to the rapidly changing marketplace and are ready to exploit new opportunities or to set future market realities.	Production systems are closed loop. Productivity gains made. Proactively identifying opportunities. Business renowned as a leader, partner of choice.

Self-Assessment Against Our Road Map

In 2006/07, we reviewed our overall performance against the Sustainable Development Road Map and concluded that, in general, we believe that our Company performance is at least at the level of ‘Responsibility’, as all compliance, risk and transparency mechanisms are now broadly established.

We can demonstrate, and aim to continuously improve, our current level of ‘Innovation’ and ‘Strategic Alignment’ performance, as follows:

Attracting socially responsible investment by increasing engagement and support of the mainstream investment community on sustainability performance.
Proactively identifying opportunities for energy efficiency and realising significant cost and greenhouse emissions savings.
Implementing spin-off technology or other business opportunities; for example, through conducting trials of biofuels at some of our operations and supporting clean coal technology research.
Increasing market access or penetration; for example, community confidence in our application for market access has played a role in the successful bid for a number of recent investment approvals.
Repositioning businesses or products in the marketplace; for example, Canada Mark diamonds and the GreenLeadTM recycling program.
Productivity gain, including reductions in hazardous waste and energy use in 2006/07.
Proactively identifying opportunities – proactive engagement of supply chain on stewardship issues, technology research into improved sustainability performance.
Recognised as a business leader, partner of choice, exemplified by being awarded Mining Sector Leader status in various investment indices.