Supporting sustainability in the steel industry

By Ross Davies - President Steel Stewardship Forum

In today’s triple bottom line economy, purchasing decisions for major projects come down to more than just cost.  The sustainability of project supply chains, including their social, economic and environmental impact, is also critical.

Historically, assessing the sustainability of supply chains has been a difficult and time-consuming exercise, often hampered by a lack of reliable data and agreed measurement criteria.

A group comprising the major players in the steel value chain is working to change all that, and in doing so improve the environmental and social footprint of the Australian steel industry. 

The Steel Stewardship Forum (SSF) is aiming to develop an industry-wide certification system to demonstrate Australian steel’s environmental credentials to its customers and potential customers.

The concept of the SSF is to bring together all major sectors – from mining through to steel manufacturing, processing, product fabrication, use and reuse, and recycling – working together to optimise the steel product lifecycle using sustainability principles including minimising the impact of steel production on society and the environment. The SSF believes that collectively we can continue to add value to and improve the performance of the steel industry across the whole product lifecycle – thereby improving commercial, social and environmental impacts.

The steel certification system – to be known as Responsible Steel - together with the Forum’s Steel Footprint project which is mapping key material flows and identifying of ‘areas of opportunity’, will deliver a clear, measurable sustainability certification process across the whole of the steel supply chain from mining to scrap recovery, and measure progress in sustainability improvement against a set of agreed benchmarks.

Responsible Steel will:

• Provide stewardship certification that supports environmental management practices and sustainable purchasing
• Reduce costs by minimising the time required to assess a supplier’s sustainability credentials
• Support efforts to reduce waste in the entire supply chain
• Support local content utilisation and a competitive Australian steel industry, thereby retaining local jobs
• Comprise the entire supply chain – including small-to-medium enterprises as well as the major companies
• Provide a ‘chain of custody’ process
• Deliver measurable environmental, economic and social benchmarking and improvement throughout the supply chain.

It is intended that this process be credible and independently verified, and eventually be recognised by industry and other stakeholders and used as a key criteria for supply of steel products into Australian building and infrastructure projects.

The aim is to have Responsible Steel launched in 2013.

The Australian Government is keen to ensure manufacturers and importers of products share responsibility for the products they produce, handle, purchase, use and discard. Responsible Steel fits well under the Voluntary Stewardship clauses of the Product Stewardship Legislation passed by Parliament earlier this year.

To this end the Australian Government Department of Innovation Industry, Science and Research, along with the NSW Office of Environment and Heritage and Sustainability Victoria have co-funded the feasibility phase of the project including the development of a comprehensive business model.

At a workshop on stewardship and lifecycle partnerships held in Beijing in November 2007, it was agreed that Australia would develop a steel stewardship model that could be shared with other APEC economies.  The SSF is the first around the world to develop a stewardship model for the steel industry.

A meeting of interested parties was held in Melbourne in March 2008 were it was decided to pursue the development of a more formal forum. The Steel Stewardship Forum was born.

Current membership of the Steel Stewardship Forum comprises the Australian Galvanizers Association, Australian Slag Association, Australian Steel Institute, BlueScope Steel, BHP Billiton, CSIRO, GHD, Hatch, National Association of Steel Framed Housing (NASH), OneSteel, Rio Tinto, Steel Reinforcing Institute of Australia, and Welding Technology Institute of Australia.

Once developed, it is intended that Responsible Steel will be presented to the APEC Ministers responsible for mining as ‘best practice’ and a template for use in other industries.  Read more about the Steel Stewardship Forum.