Combined with safe water and good hygiene, improved sanitation could save up to 842,000 lives each year, while helping to give people the dignity and privacy they deserve.
Playing our part
Water and how it is managed, is a priority for us at Anglo American. Almost three-quarters of our operations are located in high water-risk regions so we work hard to re-use and recycle as much as possible. For example, our Coal South Africa’s eMalahleni water reclamation plant, treats around 25,000 m3 of mine-affected water every day, which meets the potable water needs of nearby mines and provides drinking water for 80,000 people.
In addition to drinking water, we work with our community partners to assess sanitation services and, in some cases, provide them: a recent R48 million rand investment from Anglo American doubled the capacity of a sewage network in a community situated close to one our mines in South Africa.
We also routinely work with our communities to invest in their sanitisation facilities. Our Los Bronces (Chile) and Mogalakwena, (South Africa) sites accept treated sewage as feed water in our operations. In Limpopo Province in South Africa, we invest in upgrading and maintaining local community sewage treatment facilities, so that those communities can provide sanitisation services to their people.
In several other regions, we provide treated wastewater to local communities so that they do not have to use their own scarce water supplies for anything other than their own drinking and sanitary needs. And we continue to look at and assess the long term needs of the regions in which we operate, in order to support our communities in terms of their sanitary water requirements.
Case study: Zwelakhe Junior Secondary School (JSS)
Zwelakhe Junior Secondary School (JSS) in the rural village of Mbashe is situated in a deprived area of South Africa’s Eastern Cape. This means that the school is not allowed to charge school fees and has to rely on funding from the Eastern Cape Department of Basic Education to keep going.
As well as being a school for 200+ children, Zwelakhe is also a community hub where people gather to talk, share information and embark on adult education courses via government initiatives such as adult basic education and training (ABET).
In recent years, the community got together to add on classrooms and a kitchen for the school but ran out of funds before they were complete. In 2015, Anglo American’s Chairman’s Fund stepped in and agreed to fund classrooms to replace the mud structures that were put up by the community, as well as a much-needed toilet block for students.
