Newmont Mining Sets New Standard for Forward-Thinking EH&S Policies

Newmont Mining is a Denver-based gold exploration company that’s listed on the S&P 500. I was searching online for interesting EH&S statistics and information, and when I typed EH&S into Google, Newmont came up on the first page of search results! That’s huge for a mining company.

And then I went to the website and saw the company’s sustainability initiative,
which it calls “Beyond the Mine.” This initiative is probably responsible for Newmont’s “Google juice” in EH&S searches. As part of this initiative, the company has instituted a three person board-level committee on health and safety, which is part of its corporate governance structure. The purpose of this committee is to advise and oversee management on environmental health and safety issues. The committee has the power to “investigate any activity of the Corporation and its subsidiaries relating to environmental, health or safety matters. The Committee has been, and shall be, granted unrestricted access to all information and all employees have been, and shall be, directed to cooperate as requested by members of the Committee. The Committee has the authority to retain, at the Corporation’s expense, persons having special competencies (including, without limitation, legal or other consultants and experts) to assist the Committee in fulfilling its responsibilities.”

This strikes me as a very forward-thinking policy for a company that does business globally, as Newmont does. And if you read further into it, the policy is designed to help them attract and retain workers, as well as exhibit corporate social responsibility.

I’m glad to see Newmont going in this direction.

Add comment June 22nd, 2007