Corporate Social Responsibility

Recycling is one of the primary ways in which economies can reduce their energy output and carbon emissions. Recycling also preserves scarce natural resources, saves water, and reduces pollution and dependence on landfill.

Raw materials extracted from recycling electrnoics include aluminum, copper, plastic, steel and glass.  As shown in the diagram below, significant energy savings are realized when these recycled commodities are used in new product manufacturing instead of virgin material.

The advanced processing equipment used by Sims Recycling Solutions allows us to increase complete separation of materials, producing "refining ready" streams of reusable base and ferrous metals, precious metal bearing materials, and clean streams of plastics and glass.  When commodity streams of this quality are produced by Sims, this maximizes the reuse potential of these raw materials in manufacturing new products from recycled materials.  Our downstream vendor relationships are quite different from most vendors because of the volume of electronics that we process, and the high separation technology capabilities of our facilities.

Each year our parent company, Sims Metal Management Limited, reports on the following parameters:

• Carbon emissions
• Energy Use
• Water Use
• Waste Generation
• Key Health and Safety Indicators

Output from Sims Recycling Solutions centers contributed to Sims Metal Management's handling of over 13 million tons of ferrous and non ferrous materials during fiscal year 2009. The use of these materials, as opposed to virgin materials, saved more than 45 gigajoules of energy, enough to provide power for more than 6.3 million households (or 15 million people).

In October 2010, Sims Metal Management was recognized as a top performer by the Investor Group on Climate Change for Carbon Disclosure Leadership Index (CDLI). The CDLI is an important global survey that ranks the transparency of companies as they report and manage carbon emissions.  It reflects best practices in terms of corporate governance in measuring greenhouse gas emissions. This index is representative of Sims' strategic commitment to measuring and managing our corporate carbon footprint and being a responsible environmental corporate citizen on the global stage.