Sustainable development indicators of the European aluminium industry

The European aluminium industry, through its member organisation the European Aluminium Association (EAA), initiated a program on sustainable development for the aluminium industry in 2001. The first step involved the development of a set of sustainable development (SD) indicators for the industry which was developed during 2001 and 2002 with both internal and external stakeholder groups. A list of 34 indicators was used in the first survey exercise. The survey attempted to cover all European plants producing alumina, primary aluminium, rolling ingots, extrusion ingots, foil and recycled aluminium; this covered approximately 800 plants. The survey used two points in time, 1997 and 2002, in order to start developing a trend for the individual indicators and to measure progress over time. The industry response to the survey was very positive, with a total industry coverage based on tonnage reported of over 80% for 2002 data and 70% for 1997 data. The EAA is committed to conducting this as a regular exercise and is engaged in a number of stakeholder workshops in order to present the survey results, to review the indicators used and to also consider adjustments of these based on feedback from stakeholders and experiences from the first data collection.