5: Trusted user of air, land and water

Our steel plants are designed to treat and recycle the same intake of water repeatedly, often hundreds of times. Given the volumes we need to withdraw, steel plants are typically built in places where surface water is widely available, so water withdrawn from groundwater sources makes up less than 1% of our water intake; and seawater is often used for cooling purposes. Nonetheless, in an era of increasing water scarcity, stakeholders need to be able to access and understand the data, and so how our water use may or may not impact them. We are reviewing the quality of our water data with this in mind.

Circumstances vary from site to site and our net water use – the difference between the water we withdraw and that we discharge – is reported more specifically in our country sustainability reports. Our consolidated figure for net water use across the group is five cubic metres per tonne of steel.

Nonetheless, where freshwater is scarce or when drought strikes, we work with local municipal and water authorities to explore the best sources for our water, including seawater, rainwater, and wastewater from water treatment plants. In 2016, for example, at our Ostrava mill in the Czech Republic, we contributed to the area's watershed planning process after working with the local watershed administrator to manage our water consumption during a drought in 2015. Our Piombino site in Italy installed a desalination plant in 2015, and our Tubarão steelplant in Brazil is investigating this for the long-term future of their operations.

At the end of 2016 we started to review our mapping of water scarcity across our sites, and how we report and measure water. We want to ensure we are reporting high quality data, and focusing on where the risks are, not just from a regulatory point of view, but in terms of all the stakeholders with whom we share freshwater supplies.