According to the UN Global Compact, companies should commit to the ten principles in the areas of human rights, labour, environment and anti-corruption (UN Global Compact, Accessed 27/12/11). We, BHP Billiton, as a global company realise that we need to give back to the society. Hence, we have put our focus on to the first and the seventh principles from the ten principles of UN Global Compact. The first principle focuses on the humanity rights, it stated, “businesses should support and respect the protection of internationally proclaimed human rights” (Global Compact Principle One, Accessed 27/12/11). And the seventh principle encourages businesses to support a “precautionary approach to environmental challenges” (Global Compact Principle Nine, Accessed 27/12/11). Our sustainable reports available through our website. It can be checked that we have been doing a sustainably
I, as the Director of Communication of BHP Billiton, recommend the company to:
1. Protect the human rights in South Africa, both villagers around the mining area and employees,
2. Reduce the mining waste in the mining area because it may caused health and environment problem in the area
In order to protect human rights, our program for the society is “Window of Opportunity”. This program focuses in helping and improving the health of women and children in South Africa and Mozambique and our company has provided $25 million for this program (BHP Billiton News, 2011). As a mining company working in the area, we have to protect the people of South Africa.
More than a decade ago, BHP faced an environmental problem in Ok Tedi, Papua New Guinea. BHP has dumped millions tonnes of toxic waste from their mining site which affected the surrounding areas. BHP Billiton had learnt their lesson from the past experience, they spent million of dollars to help the recovery of the villagers around Ok Tedi site. To solve the environment problems, our company is trying so hard to minimise the waste from the mining by proper disposal and find effective strategies to deal with climate change by reducing emission and handling greenhouse gas emissions (BHP Billiton, Accessed 27/12/11).
In order to manage this minimising the waste, our company need to have a waste management department. This department will be managing each site to minimise their waste or dispose it. And this department will be doing so with the help of Local Network.
The challenges are when we are donating the money for the women and children are the money is being used for something else or corruption. That is why we are donating the money through a known organisation because this organisation will manage all the donated money. And another challenge for our company is when we are disposing the waste from our mining site. It might or might not be successful when doing so.
In conclusion, our company will be known as an environmentally friendly mining company in the South African area. And the company will be known as a company that is paying their attention to the society to. We have donated for the victims of Japanese tsunami as well.