As the U.S. member body to the International Organization for Standardization (ISO), the American National Standards Institute (ANSI) seeks comments by June 30 on a draft proposal for a new ISO standard and Project Committee (PC) on sustainable raw materials.
Submitted by DIN, the German member of ISO, the proposal includes the following scope statement:
“This document specifies criteria for sustainable raw materials along industry best practices and is intended to be used for mineral-, raw iron-, and non-iron-metals. It is applicable to the full value chain of all raw materials, from extraction (mining) to processing, to refining, to final product manufacturing, thereby including the full upstream and downstream value chain. It does not apply to the mine closure and/or mine reclamation stage activities as these stages are not considered integral parts of the value chain.”
The proposal states that although there an increasing regulatory framework for sustainable recovery and processing of raw materials, there are currently no standards available for industry implementation. As such, industry stakeholders cannot document compliancy of their sustainable mining, processing, and refining operations with accepted criteria for sustainable raw materials. Common guidelines for all raw materials developed by the proposed PC would help avoid overlaps in ISO standards, and enable wider dissemination and application of the standards.
Learn more in the draft proposal.
Comments on this proposal should be submitted to Steven Cornish, ANSI senior director of international policy and strategy, at [email protected] by June 30, 2023.