Sustainability Indicators were established by the World Steel Association in 2003 to benchmark the progress of its members to improving their operations measured by three indicators, Environmental, Social and Economic.
Environmental monitors four parameters;
− Greenhouse gas emissions which have remained at 1.8tCO2eq/t crude steel since 2007;
− Energy intensity which has marginally fallen to 20.7GJ/t crude steel from 20.8 in 2007;
− Material Efficiency which has fallen to 94.4% of by-products used compared with 97.9%in 2007; and
− Environment Management Systems (EMS) measured in terms on the percentage of employees and contractors in EMS registered facilities which has increased from 85.1% in 2007 to 89.9% in 2011.
Social Sustainability monitors loss time injury frequency in terms of injuries per million hours worked and this figure has improved markedly to 1.9 in 2011 compared with 4.5 in 2007. Indeed, compared with other heavy industry the figure is converging on the value for aluminium and betters that for oil & gas while the cement industry boats the lowest injury rate. The second parameter measured relates to training and this has seen a fall from 11.1 days per employee in 2007 to 7.7 in 2011.
The third measure of sustainability, Economic, measures investment in new processes and products as a % of revenue and this has increased to 8.3% compared with 7.9% in 2007, but is a fall from a peak of 10.25 in 2009. The other parameter measured is Economic value distributed which has increased to US$617.9bn (93.1% of revenue) in 2011 compared to $323.8bn (83.0% of revenue) in 2007.
The full report can be downloaded from www.worldsteel.org
