reverberated loudly in January 2019 when a waste dam at the Córrego do Feijão iron ore mine in Brazil, owned by miner Vale, collapsed, killing 270 people.
The upshot has been a concerted effort to improve the engineering of such facilities and to reduce the amount of waste generated by the mining sector — waste of an often toxic nature which winds up in tailings dams meant to contain it. The roadmap unveiled on Thursday by the ICMM is one of several initiatives aimed at tackling this complex issue.
“If we continue to use traditional production processes, we run the risk of multiplying tailings waste many times over. There is no easy solution, and we will continue to need tailings storage facilities into the future. However, this initiative signals our clear intent to act with urgency and purpose to find ways of minimising or potentially eliminating waste at every stage of the mining cycle.”
The roadmap says other areas include “precision geology” to maximise the ore mined and minimise the waste rock extracted in the process. Creating value from tailings is another option — if it has value, it’s no longer waste.There is also a Global Industry Standard on Tailings Management, and the ICMM says that 79 companies, including its 26 members, have signed up to it.