The Business Revolution Episode 4

We’re joined by Jenny Agnew, a sustainability expert from Sedgman, who shares her insights and experiences in integrating environmental, social, and governance factors into mining operations.

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In this episode of The Business Revolution, we delve into the surprising new world of sustainable mining practices. Join us as we explore cutting-edge techniques that are reducing environmental impact and revolutionary ways of turning waste into valuable resources.

Key takeaways from this episode:

Discover how mining is both part of the problem and part of the solution in the journey towards decarbonisation.
Learn about exciting innovations and new technologies like in situ leaching, surgical mining, and ore pre-concentration that are making mining more sustainable.
Explore inspiring examples of former mines being repurposed and transformed into recreational lakes, wetlands, and even renewable energy hubs.
Uncover the potential of reprocessing tailings to extract valuable minerals and create a circular economy.
Hear how collaboration between businesses, regulators, and financiers is essential for driving innovation in the mining industry.

Jenny encourages us to talk to young people about the importance of mining in the energy transition and to consider careers in the resources industry to help drive positive change.

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About Jenny Agnew

Jenny has a passion for integration of environmental, social and governance factors into strategic and operational decision making. With 22 years of experience in the resources industry, she has a solid foundation of process engineering experience, and a focus on linking cross-discipline expertise for improved outcomes, both at a company and industry level. At Sedgman, she supports global strategic planning and leads the ESG Working Group.

Jenny holds a degree in Chemical Engineering and has expertise in health, safety, quality and environmental management systems and risk management. Her commitment to a sustainable resources industry is demonstrated by her connection across a number of industry groups, including Austmine, AusIMM’s Social & Environment Society Committee, enviroMETS as a technical advisor, and the Decarbonisation Accelerated leaders group for the Greater Whitsundays region.

Episode 4 Transcript

Cherry Ward (00:00)

Welcome, revolutionaries. This is Cherry.

Mik Aidt (00:04)

And I’m Mick.

Alan Taylor (00:06)

And I’m Alan, together with the three business Musketeers who’ll guide you through the evolving landscape of business and sustainability.

Cherry Ward (00:15)

In today’s episode, we are diving into cutting edge techniques that reduce environmental impact to revolutionary ways of turning waste into valuable resources as mining steps into a new era.

Mik Aidt (00:29)

I think everyone in the business sector these days is feeling the pressure. We have to reduce emissions, we have to be more sustainable in our practices and so on. And understanding where to start is really crucial. And understanding which actions that actually have an impact is crucial.

Alan Taylor (00:48)

Today, we’re diving into a topic that is both vital for our planet and surprisingly full of innovation. Now, I know that you might be thinking that mining and sustainability don’t exactly sound like they go hand in hand, but the truth is there’s a fascinating transformation happening in that industry.

Cherry Ward (01:07)

We’ll hear from a sustainability expert in the field and share success stories that prove sustainability isn’t just good for the planet. It’s good for businesses too.

Mik Aidt (01:18)

So whether you are a business owner or a climate advocate or maybe you’re just curious about the future of our planet, you wouldn’t want to miss this episode of the Business Revolution.

Cherry Ward (01:31)

And that’s why we’re thrilled to have Jenny Agnew, a true expert in sustainable mining practices, joining us today. Jenny has a passion for integration of environmental, social, and governance factors into strategic and operational decision -making. With over 22 years of experience in the resources industry, Jenny has a solid foundation of process engineering experience and a focus on linking cross -discipline expertise for improved outcomes, both at a company level and an industry level. At Sedgman, Jenny supports global strategic planning and leads the ESG working group. Welcome to the business revolution, Jenny.

Mik Aidt (02:15)

ESG, environmental social governance. That’s something it’s really on everybody’s lips in the business world at the moment. What do you actually do in the ESG working group, Jenny?

Jenny Agnew (02:25)

We have a strategy for our business, which covers how we run our business itself, you know, the power we use, the fuel we use, but also it looks at our impact socially. So on our supply chains and both the inside our business, our employees, but also the people that work for our suppliers as well as, and this is, I feel the biggest impact that our business has, is our design of mineral processing plants because they last for, you know, 30 years, they use power, they use water. There’s tailings that are created. So the way that we go about designing those and providing options to our clients when we’re in the early concept design is one of the key ways that we can influence towards a more sustainable industry.

Mik Aidt (03:09)

So what’s your job in that? Is it like you’re the influencer or are you actually hands on the paper and sitting and making these plants?

Jenny Agnew (03:17)

A bit of both. It’s a team effort. You can’t do this work from an ivory tower. It has to include people from all across the business. So we do have people from different regions, from different divisions in the company that will come together and agree what the right things to work on at the moment are and try and keep ourselves accountable by meeting regularly to track progress.

Alan Taylor (03:39)

You say that what they have to do, so what sort of things are they doing or need to be done to mitigate the effects of mining?

Jenny Agnew (03:47)

Well, I’ll take a little bit step back and talk about mining a little bit in terms of it’s both part of the problem if we’re thinking about decarbonisation as well as part of the solution. So processing ores, as I said, can use a lot of water and power and produces often a finely ground rock called tailings, which needs to be stored somewhere. And that can lead to environmental harm if it’s not managed well. But…

On the other hand, we need these minerals to build the critical infrastructure for the green transition. So solar panels, wind turbines, transmission lines. And recycling is going to fill some of that demand, but we’re still going to need an amazing amount of newly mined minerals to get towards the Paris aligned goals. The International Energy Agency did a report a little while ago and that estimated relative to 2020 demand, by 2040 will need 2 .7 times more copper, 42 times more lithium and 19 more times more nickel. So, and in addition to that, we need steel for building some of those infrastructure and also for developing countries for building hospitals and bridges, those kinds of things. So that’s just to set the scene that more than ever we need to plan mines with their operational impacts in mind and also with transition to a post-mining land use in mine as well.

Mik Aidt (05:17)

Good place to start. It would seem to me that a lot of businesses are in the same boat, more or less. Everyone needs transport and as it is at the moment, transport is a pollution, using fossil fuels and so on. So tell us a little bit about, you could say the structural thinking that you put into this.

Jenny Agnew (05:40)

Sure, well there’s a few things I might talk about. One’s reducing emissions during mining. So actually at the mine site. So there are companies that are, mining companies are really looking at reducing that through emissions of the fleet of trucks. So electrification of that fleet. And in terms of processing, which is kind of my specialty, some emerging technologies are quite exciting.

In situ leaching can be appropriate in some circumstances as well as surgical mining and they really reduce their surface impact of mining. And there’s also ore pre -concentration, low energy crushing, coarse flotation and tailings dewatering and all of those can reduce power, water usage and surface impact. And I love that some of the super talented engineers at Sedgman are keeping really close to some of these emerging technologies so that we can bring them into our standard practice as soon as possible. The second thing is reducing, leaving mines with a positive nature and community legacy, which is, we haven’t seen great examples of that a lot, but they’re starting to become more common and some good examples. So because it’s always good to share wins, they create momentum towards more wins.

So there’s a coal mine in Western Australia that’s now a recreational lake with a rehabilitated landscape. There’s a titanium mine also in Western Australia moving to relinquishment. They’ve had to cover some of the tailings in water so they don’t impact the environment and the waterways, but that’s now becoming a wetlands with an ongoing management plan. There are former gold mine sites that have had restoration of fish habitat by re-mining.

The tailings and that gold is then becoming used in items such as jewellery. So that’s like a sustainable product. Underground pits and surface water storage can be used for hydro projects. And, you know, the problem at the moment is that some of the regulations haven’t quite kept up with the thinking and the things that are possible. But there are, I see some good involvement from government stakeholders in starting to think about how we might move on that.

There are options for using already cleared mined land for solar production, which might mean we don’t have to clear sites that haven’t been disturbed yet. And pits could be used for aquaculture or growth of algae for biofuels. There’s a lot of options and there’s some really good examples across the world and I want to see more of those. And I’d like to give a bit of a shout out to a not -for -profit company called EnviroMETS Queensland, which is starting conversations by bringing stakeholders together to dream about what could be and…trying to make some really practical steps towards some pilot sites for testing out some of these options.

Mik Aidt (08:40)

I think you touched on something really important there, which is, is this a bottom -up movement? Is this a lot of employees that sort of make the push upwards towards their management? Or to which degree does it have to be the management that actually gets it and then directs the employees to take action? It’s like the hen and the egg, isn’t it?

Jenny Agnew (09:01)

It sure is. I think I’m going to liken it to the safety journey that the mining industry has been on over the last 20 years in that it’s something that has to be everybody’s responsibility for it to be effective. So it’s important for the people on the ground to be looking out about what they can influence, but also definitely for management to set the direction and enable their teams and provide funding for projects that need that.

Mik Aidt (09:30)

And how is that in your case, in your organisation? Can you talk about that?

Jenny Agnew (09:33)

Sure. So I’m lucky that our managing directors is quite interested in these kinds of things and our company as a whole is really pushing into the critical mineral space which is aligned with the green transition. So for example, we started to see that work in mine rehabilitation was going to become a bigger thing going forward and so we’ve started a new business unit for environmental services. And the value that that’s providing is that we can have these environmental experts be part of the conversation at the beginning of the designs, as well as provide standalone services.

Alan Taylor (10:15)

Thinking about that, we just get those people on board and having them there. And you mentioned earlier, the innovation, the different ways of mining where, for example, you use just picking one of the examples you sent, and I can’t remember what the technique was called, but it was where you don’t even need to disturb the surface. And, and so when you’ve got these sorts of changes, the changes impact in, in the way that we’re thinking the way that we’re working, sometimes there’s a fear of doing something that’s new in that respect.

What can you tell us about how that innovation is being taken on board and things like regulations and old habits being overcome?

Jenny Agnew (10:55)

It’s, you know, a bit two steps forward, one step back in reality, because business as usual is easier to get funding for. You know, it’s lower risk. So it’s not s easy to find someone to foot the bill to start something up where you’re doing something innovative. It takes a lot more collaboration, both with the regulator and with your financiers so that they really understand what you’re trying to do. So there is, you know, some new things coming, but it is a little bit slow.

Alan Taylor (11:24)

I like that point you made there, it’s a collaboration with the regulators. And I’ve heard that before, and I come from the IT world, and I’ve heard that sometimes where people have had regulations or just perceptions of regulations, and having those conversations with the source has made them achievable and you can get over them. So it sounds great that those conversations are happening. It shows what can be done to overcome hurdles. So thank you.

Cherry Ward (11:52)

Jenny, you mentioned some really cool examples earlier of, you know, turning some of that mining, you know, I guess you can call it waste into something that’s more useful. But we don’t hear much about that and what’s happening, you know, is there is that something that, you know, businesses like Sedgman are trying to share with the community? Because I think often there’s just this view that, OK, it’s just a hole in the ground and then you move on and the next thing.

Jenny Agnew (12:23)

Yeah, it’s probably something that the whole industry isn’t great at, which is telling stories well, something we can get better at. But in terms of things that are happening, one of my favourites in terms of thinking about waste as a resource is tailings from historic mines often contain some really neat things because either the technology has gotten so much better that we can really get that same thing out of the tailings because it wasn’t recovered the first time.

But often some of these critical minerals weren’t even on the radar when those original mines were producing. So there’s quite interesting things in some of these tailings dams, including cobalt and things that are needed for batteries. So reprocessing tailings sometimes it’s not always economic, but there are projects where it can be. And it also provides the opportunity if you’re removing, if you’re moving that material for a second time, to do something better with that waste and store it in a safer way. So that’s kind of one of my favourite things to hear stories about.

Alan Taylor (13:30)

So just replaying that, it sounds like you’re actually taking opportunities from what is waste at the moment. You’re taking something out of that which is positive.

Jenny Agnew (13:39)

One example of that is the new century mine, which is in the Gulf country of Queensland. And that was a historic zinc mine. And it went into care and maintenance for a while and a company called New Century took that mine on and had been, and Sedgman was involved in reconfiguring the processing plants and reprocessing that before we handed it back to the client to run. And basically that was pulling more product out of the tailings and also provided the opportunity to put the tailings in a safer place.

Alan Taylor (14:16)

I’m hearing a key word that comes to my mind here is adaptation. Moving from a plan, this is what we would do and thinking and being able to rethink as you’re going into something. Is that what’s happening?

Jenny Agnew (14:29)

Yes, but it’s difficult because when you apply for a regulatory approval, for your new mine you said what was going to happen. So you have to get any new idea re approved. So that takes leadership and vision and patience and possibly funding for that time. Yeah. But for sure, thinking differently is how we’re going to be able to create an industry that’s more sustainable to be able to produce the minerals that the world needs.

Mik Aidt (15:00)

Hmm, that’s where the revolution part comes in, isn’t it? Thinking? Thinking differently.

Jenny Agnew (15:03)

For sure. Yep. So I’ll also give a shout out to the Think and Act Differently group who were part of Oz Minerals and are now part of BHP. We had the opportunity to spend some time with that team and really enjoyed the process exploring what a more scalable and adaptable mine might look like.

Mik Aidt (15:26)

So how is the atmosphere in the mining industry as a whole? Is it optimistic? How would you describe the atmosphere at the moment?

Jenny Agnew (15:39)

Well, I would say five years ago at a conference, it was quite technical. And nowadays you’d be lucky if maybe half of the presentations weren’t in some way related or a hundred percent related to sustainability and ESG. It’s really a massive topic. Everybody’s aware that we need to be creative about how we plan the mines, the transition to lower emission mining. There’s a lot going on in that space.

Mik Aidt (15:53)

To newcomers, an organisation that’s just stepping into the ESG world, what would be your advice? What should they first be thinking about entering this ESG world?

Jenny Agnew (16:25)

Well, look, if you’re a company thinking about, you know, what do I do now? If I’m just thinking about it, the real thing is to understand what your business is. Every business is different and has its own footprint and its own influence on their clients and products that they produce.

So it’s really important just to understand your business and your supply chain and your clients and your impact, because then you can design the next steps, it’s a journey. It’s not something you do in one day. The next steps, the next best step to move towards a business that you can be proud of your impact in that space.

Alan Taylor (17:08)

I’m hearing here, you know, that word pride, and it’s great because that’s a motivator. You know, the fact that we’ve got an opportunity to do something different, bring out some big wins and make some changes. It’s hard work to get that wheel moving, but once people get a few tastes of it, that can amplify over time. So that’s great.

Jenny Agnew (17:27)

Yep. And if I would tie that a little bit back to mining, companies that are in an area where a mine exists might think about what waste products that a mine has might be able to be incorporated into a product that you have in terms of a circular economy approach. Is there crushed rock that might be helpful because you’re building roads? Do you have a use for tyres? Waste tires, because there’s a lot of those that get produced. Maybe you can recycle PPE. There’s a lot of things that can be done in that space, but Australia is a massive landmass. So it really does come down to limitations of transport. So looking around your local area about what you could influence.

Alan Taylor (18:18)

Thinking about that influence and that challenge, just as you’re speaking, it was reminding me a little catch cry I like to use. It’s like, what would you like to tell your children or your grandchildren that you’ve achieved that did something towards it? And you just used a few examples in there. I helped reduce the amount of rubber that was wasted and put it into some good use or whatever the action is. So people have got that narrative that they’ll be able to add to their story.

Cherry Ward (18:47)

We are introducing a segment called rapid fire tip for action, which is an opportunity for our guests to provide actionable insights for our listeners to inspire you, and take action. So Jenny, our question for you today is what’s one thing everyone can do right now to contribute to a better world?

Jenny Agnew (19:09)

I would like you to talk to the young people in your life and help them appreciate how minerals intensive the energy transition is and to see if they would consider a career in the resources industry because we need skills, we need passion to help us change practice towards producing the materials needed with much lower impacts.

Cherry Ward (19:28)

Thank you, Jenny, for taking the time to share your insights with us. And one final question, is there anywhere listeners can go to to find out more about you and the work that you’re doing?

Jenny Agnew (19:42)

I’ll probably just follow or connect with me on LinkedIn.

Cherry Ward (19:46)

And that’s a wrap for today’s episode of the Business Revolution.

Mik Aidt (19:51)

We hope you enjoyed diving deep into this world of business and sustainability together with us.

Alan Taylor (19:58)

And remember, the revolution doesn’t end here. It’s up to each and every one of us to take the knowledge and inspiration from today’s episode and turn it into action, your action.

Cherry Ward (20:09)

Whether it’s implementing sustainable practices in your own business or advocating for change in your community, every step counts towards building a better future.

Mik Aidt (20:21)

And don’t forget, you can always access our website, businessrevolution.earth is open for business day and night with resources and you can see links to our past episodes. You can also listen to those on your phone and so on. There’s plenty of ways to get involved. We’re also planning to set up some meetings very soon. So get on our mailing list.

Alan Taylor (20:44)

If you enjoyed today’s episode, be sure to subscribe, rate and review the business revolution on your favourite podcast platform. This feedback helps us reach more listeners and amplify our impact. And obviously this is something that you can resonate with. So it helps you as well.

Cherry Ward (21:02)

Thank you for joining us on this journey of transformation. Together we can revolutionise the way we do business and create a world that’s sustainable for generations to come.

Alan Taylor (21:14)

So stay tuned for insights, inspiration, and actionable steps to help reshape the way we do business for a better tomorrow.

Mik Aidt (21:27)

And until next time, hang in there, keep innovating and keep inspiring around you, keep pushing for positive change in your organisation and for a brighter tomorrow for all of us. I’m Mick.

Alan Taylor(21:40)

I’m Alan.

Cherry Ward (21:41)

And this is Cherry signing off. The business revolution starts with you.