Company: RTNTF
Filing Date: 2025-02-20
Form Type: 20-F
Source: 0001628280-25-006642
Chunk: 72

Company: RIO TINTO LTD
Filing Date: 2025-02-20
Form: 20-F
Chunk 72
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urity scandium oxide at Sorel- Tracy and tellurium at Kennecott. We also continue to look for opportunities to repurpose items we purchase at the end of useful life. For example, over the last 2 years, we have partnered with a local business to recycle end-of-life tyres and conveyor belts used to move ore from our operations across northern Australia. Following a successful trial at the Argyle diamond mine in 2023, we have expanded the trial to Yarwun, Weipa and Boyne Smelters Limited in Queensland. Some of our assets generate mineral waste with the potential to be chemically reactive, requiring careful management to prevent environmental impacts. We conduct independent reviews every 4 years to assess the effectiveness of our risk management programs and identify areas for improvement. In 2024, we completed this at 2 sites – Iron Ore Company of Canada (IOC) mining operations in Labrador City, Newfoundland and Labrador in Canada, and QIT Madagascar Minerals (QMM) near Fort Dauphin in the Anosy region of south-eastern Madagascar. Further opportunities to improve mineral waste management will continue at both sites in the short and long term.

| For more informationabout tailingssee page39. |

Air quality Clean air is critical for the health of host communities and the surrounding ecosystems. We are working to improve air quality management, focusing on emissions of particulate matter and gases from our operational activities, including mining, materials handling, processing and transportation. The potentially hazardous emissions we monitor at operations are: – sulphur oxides (SOx), mainly at our aluminium and copper smelters – nitrogen oxides (NOx), mainly from burning fossil fuels – gaseous fluoride emissions from aluminium smelters – respirable particulate emissions (PM 10 and PM 2.5 ), very fine particles from mining and processing operations and from burning fossil fuels. We focus on reducing emissions at source by upgrading equipment to use the most appropriately available technologies, adding air pollution control equipment, implementing mitigation measures and using renewable energy or alternative feed material where possible. Our air quality management programs include monitoring, sampling at source, incident tracking and risk assessments. Many of our assets have multi-year air quality improvement projects in place. For example, at IOC, there is a multidisciplinary working group focused on assessing dust abatement options. We are mitigating dust at the source by introducing new dust control technology. The working group is also exploring new mitigation options to further limit fugitive dust emissions from our operations. We have expanded our