Environmental Stewardship Is Central to Our Business

We understand the impact our activities can have on the environment; our Sustainability and Stakeholder Engagement Policy and environmental standards are designed to protect the environment and prevent – or otherwise minimize, mitigate and remediate – those impacts. Partnerships with experts, non-governmental organizations (NGOs), regulators and communities also help inform our management systems to ensure they are implemented consistently and are effective at protecting our environment. Our environmental stewardship policies and programs set standards of excellence with regard to a number of matters, including the items listed below.

Newmont's Standards

Environmental Responsibility

Closure & Reclamation Management

reclamation management

From gold mine to botanical garden
After planting hundreds of thousands of trees on a former gold mine site, we turned over 1,095 acres (433 ha) of land to the government of Indonesia. Today, the area is a thriving forest and the future site of a botanical garden. Properly closing mines to minimize risks and reclaiming land to its pre-mining state or transforming it into an alternative and sustainable resource for local communities.

Policies & Standards

ꦗCelebrating 25 Years of Reclamation and Partnership

Closure Planning & Costing
Before construction, each Newmont operation must have a closure and reclamation plan that includes the technical aspects of closure and associated costs; regulatory and stakeholder commitments; environmental, social and financial risks; and a concurrent reclamation plan.
Concurrent Reclamation Management
Concurrent reclamation involves rehabilitating disturbed land while continuing to develop mineral resources. The goal is to minimize impacts to the environment while decreasing the amount of time any land is in a disturbed state.
Closure Management
Closure management includes all post-operational activities at closed mines to reduce safety and environmental issues, address economic and social community challenges and manage ongoing costs and liabilities.
Legacy Management
Newmont currently manages 15 legacy sites where we safely and responsibly manage decommissioning and rehabilitating of land. When possible we are repurposing the land or restoring it to its pre-mining use.

Water & Effluent Management

Water Effluent Management

Improving access to high quality water for communities in Peru
Yanacocha partnered with the Cajamarca municipal water authority to improve drinking water quantity, quality and supply reliability for around 180,000 people in the city of Cajamarca. In addition, the operation built two reservoirs that serve the rural communities of the entire basin.​

Policies & Standards

Working Collectively to Protect Water

Watershed Baseline
Defining watershed conditions, such as water availability and quality, prior to mining, is critical to support the operation’s impact on mitigation and closure design. Water is a shared resource and understanding the watershed challenges and opportunities is an ongoing process throughout the life of mine.
Water Supply & Withdrawal
Water supply and mine dewatering are essential parts of mining operations. Water withdrawal for supply and dewatering are important aspects of mine approvals and social license and are integrated into the site water balance and water management plan throughout the life of mine.
Hydrology & Water Balance
Characterization of site hydrology and water balance is critical to mine planning and water management. Understanding hydrology allows the design of surface and ground water collection infrastructure to separate non-contact and contact water and to appropriately size facilities to store and discharge mine waters.
Water Treatment & Discharge
Direct precipitation, surface and ground water that interact with mine areas and waste can have complex water chemistry that must be treated prior to leaving our operations. Detailed characterization, modeling and treatability test work is required to support mine treatment plant design and construction.
Water Use, Recycle & Efficiency
Integral to water stewardship are activities that optimize water use throughout the project development and mine lifecycle; reduce fresh water consumption; increase reusing and recycling efficiencies; and improve water management, efficiencies and loss reduction.
Watershed Partnerships
We partner with governments, NGOs and communities to effectively manage watersheds impacted by our operations. Being stewards of water means working collaboratively with key stakeholders in the watershed and understanding current and future conditions.

Waste & Chemical Management

Waste Chemical Management

Global Review of Cyanide Risks Leads to Code Improvement Recommendations
A review of our cyanide management approach verified that it’s aligned with industry best practices, but also identified opportunities to improve. We developed action plans to address risks, presented our findings to the International Cyanide Management Code, and discussed potential improvements to the Code.
Hazardous & Solid Waste Management
Our standard requires sites to minimize the use of hazardous materials and transfer, distribute and store such materials in a manner that protects human health and the environment. We seek to minimize the quantity of hazardous waste we generate by replacing hazardous chemicals with less hazardous products whenever possible.
Tailing Facilities Management
Tailings storage facilities (TSFs) are constructed to contain the tailings material. Our TSFs are maintained to protect surface water and groundwater, prevent uncontrolled releases of pollutants or contaminants to the environment, manage process fluids and meet requirements for closure.
Waste Rock Management
Waste rock material is produced during the mining process. We characterize waste rock material and design, construct, operate and close waste rock storage facilities to minimize long-term risk and impacts. Site-specific strategies are provided for minimizing acid rock drainage and collecting and treating, if necessary.
Heap Leach Facilities (HLF) Management
Our standard sets requirements for design and management of HFLs to protect human health, the environment and water resources. Water balance and process solution containment are key considerations to assuring life of mine safe operation.
Ore Stockpiles Management
Ore stockpiles are designed, managed and operated to reduce footprints and minimize potential risk for environmental impact. The standard addresses characterization and management.
Cyanide Management
Cyanide used in processing gold is transported and stored to protect our employees, the environment and communities near our operations. We are a signatory of the International Cyanide Management Code (ICMC) and require all operating sites to be certified under the code and require audits and recertification every three years.

Biodiversity Management

Biodiversity Management

Sagebrush Ecosystem Conservation Program
In 2016, Newmont entered into an agreement with the U.S. Department of the Interior for managing more than 1.5 million acres of sagebrush in Nevada. The agreement incorporates Nevada’s conservation Credit System providing an approach to balance land use activities (such as ranching and resource development) with species protection.

Policies & Standards

ཧSharing Lessons Learned on No Net Loss Approach to Biodiversity

IUCN Independent Review with Newmont

Biodiversity Baseline
Baseline data is collected for use in designing and operating mines to avoid negatively impacting ecosystem biodiversity in and around our sites. We use the Integrated Biodiversity Assessment Tool (IBAT) to identify legally protected and high biodiversity value areas when conducting assessments and developing BAPs.
Biodiversity Mitigation Hierarchy
Our first goal is to avoid disrupting the biodiversity of an area. When that is not possible, we seek to minimize our impact, restore/rehabilitate the area and finally to offset any biodiversity losses.
Threatened Species Management
We collaborate with external stakeholders to preserve the survival of threatened species near our operations through natural resource management and conservation.
Biodiversity Offset Management
All operating sites conduct biodiversity risk assessments, and biodiversity and ecosystem assessments are conducted before developing new projects/expansions. Findings are used to develop biodiversity action plans (BAP), which provide strategic direction on conservation and minimizing disturbance.
Ecosystem Management
We seek to manage environmental impacts not just on Newmont land but for entire ecosystems that surround our operations. Ecosystem management aims to conserve major ecological services and restore natural resources with considerations for social, political and cultural needs.

Energy & Climate Change Management

Energy Climate Change Management

Switch to natural gas decreases greenhouse gases
We replaced propane with natural gas as the primary fuel at the Carlin roaster to decrease costs and greenhouse gas emissions.

Policies & Standards

꧙Preparing for New Era of Climate-Related Disclosures

Energy Supply Management
Ensuring a stable, reliable, secure and cost-effective energy supply for our operations is critical for our business. Supply Chain has recently developed new fuel standards and tendered fuel contracts at CC&V, Nevada, Suriname, and Australia. Tanami is moving forward on a natural gas pipeline to supply fuel for power generation.
Energy Efficiency Management
We work to achieve sustainable cost and efficiency improvements to our energy use. Newmont Full Potential (FP) program has been the primary conduit in reducing operational costs and improving energy efficiencies through various projects such as improving haul road conditions, truck loading capacities, and reducing truck idle time.
Energy Resource Stewardship
Exploring renewable energy, energy efficiency strategies and carbon offsetting are some the ways we are reducing our carbon footprint. The economics of solar continue to improve through lower panel prices and rising electricity costs; several sites are evaluating solar power.
Climate Change Adaptation Management
We manage climate change risks that have the potential to impact our product or supply chain, health and availability of our workforce, and security of water and power.
Greenhouse Gas Emissions Management
Because mining is an energy and carbon emissions intensive industry, one of Newmont Energy & Climate Strategy goals (pillars) is to reduce our carbon footprint & intensity. Using alternative fuels, improving heavy equipment fuel economy and switching to low-carbon energy sources are just some of the ways we’re reducing our greenhouse gas emissions.

Air & View Management

Air View Management

New Mill Eliminates Stack Emissions at KCGM
The Gidji roaster was permanently shut down and replaced with a large ultra-fine grinding mill that eliminated mercury and SO2 emissions at KCGM’s Gidji processing plant. The project was a finalist for the government of Western Australia’s 2015 Golden Gecko Award for Environmental Excellence.

Policies & Standards

Air Quality Management
Protecting air quality in and around our operations is critical to the health and safety of our employees, communities and the environment. We monitor and report air emissions to comply with air quality laws and regulations.
Mercury Emissions Management
Capturing gaseous mercury using maximum achievable control technology and permanently retire captured mercury as a waste product so that it cannot be used in illegal mining activities or harm the environment.
Air Emissions Modeling
Monitoring our emissions of SO2, NOx, Particulate Matter, and CO at the source through stack gas testing. We model those air emissions to estimate ambient air concentrations at our site boundaries and install air pollution control technologies to reduce air emissions as required to meet ambient air quality standards.
Blast Noise & Vibration
Noise and dust from mining activities such as blasting, excavating, crushing ore, removing topsoil and operating heavy equipment on unpaved roads. We control dust by watering haul roads and spraying water into the crushers.
View Shed Management
Visual impacts of the landscape (view shed) are an important consideration of the mining life cycle during the design, permitting, construction, maintenance, and closure planning of an operation.
SO2 Management
SO2 emissions are generated from sulfur impurities in ore and coal during high temperature processes. We remove gaseous SO2 as a solid at our TS Power Plant, convert SO2 to sulfuric acid at the Carlin roaster, and eliminated KCGM SO2 emissions by shutting down the Gidji roaster.

Newmont's Tailings

Learn more about Newmont's approach to tailings management.
Learn More

Water Stewardship

Learn more about Newmont's approach to water.
Learn More

Preventing Tailings Dam Failures

Learn more about Newmont's approach to tailings management.
Case Study

Biodiversity Case Study

Sharing lessons learned on no net loss approach to biodiversity.
Case Study