SANTIAGO - Chile's State-run Codelco, the world's largest copper producer, said on Thursday its product was now 100% traceable, a key step as the sprawling miner pushes to reduce its carbon footprint and boost sustainability within its operations.
CEO Octavio Araneda said in a web seminar that tracing copper through its mines would help the company more precisely measure progress on its social and environmental goals while providing proof to increasingly demanding customers of those efforts.
"We can now say that 100% of our products are traced...which will allow us to have a very strong transparency regarding our resource use footprint," Araneda said.
The announcement comes amid a broader push by the company to reduce water consumption, recycle industrial waste and scale back carbon dioxide emissions by 2030.
Codelco said in the webinar the tool it has developed to assure traceability will help assure those sustainability targets are met.
Soaring demand for electric vehicles, a key component in the global fight against climate change, has increased attention on the carbon footprint and sustainability of inputs such as copper, cobalt and lithium.