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Imerys and the Environment

Most of the industrial activities that form Imerys’ core business have an impact, if even limited, on their environment. In the majority of cases, that impact is inherent in mining activities (quarries) and in facilities for the downstream processing of extracted minerals, whether mineralurgical separation operations or heat treatment (fusion or calcination).

Resources use
The nature of mining means that it consumes surface. In practice, this consumption is usually restricted to the area being “borrowed” for the shortest possible time then returned after restoration or allocation to a different purpose from its original use. Many of the deposits mined by Imerys around the world are suited to on-going site restoration.

This continuous restoration is particularly significant for most secondary kaolin and clay deposits, which are characterized by near-horizontal layers and a high volume of covering material. In other words, mining can progress horizontally; the covering material initially stripped is soon reused to fill the space left by extraction operations. This process makes it possible to restore soil to a natural topographic state, often in a very short time period.

Imerys is producing a detailed picture of its energy consumption on the reporting scope. A significant use of biomass is made in the Building Materials business group.

Some operations withdraw fresh water from the environment. At this stage, Imerys cannot report any consolidated data, due to the diversity of industrial processes and the wide variety of hydrogeological and climate environments in which the Group divisions operate. Investigations are on-going to develop a meaningful set of indicators.

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