 |
|
|
|
|
|
|
Chairman's Statement
Integrating sustainability into our business strategy and deepening our stakeholder engagement strategies at the corporate, business unit, and project levels remained a key focus in 2007.
We built upon our engagement work in Iceland at a proposed smelter in Greenland. There, we have introduced a similar approach that enables us to document a community’s concerns and expectations during the project feasibility phase. This allows us to integrate sustainability concepts at the earliest stage as part of our stakeholder engagement strategy, and this work will continue in 2008.
To help deepen our understanding of our stakeholders and our capacity to report on what is important to them, we established a pilot sustainability report review panel in 2007. The key message we received from panel members is that they want to know how we think. They are looking for assurances of a carefully considered thought process within our company that leads to the programs and actions we undertake. We have tried to do this in our 2007 reporting, and I thank the panel members for their gracious assistance.
We made other notable progress in our sustainability journey in 2007:
- Named one of the most sustainable corporations in the world for the third (2007) and fourth (2008) consecutive years at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland.
 more
- As a founding member of the United States Climate Action Partnership, called on the U.S. government to quickly enact strong national legislation to achieve significant reductions of greenhouse gas emissions. more
- Achieved further reductions in our greenhouse gas, sulfur dioxide, nitrogen oxide, and volatile organic compounds emissions from our operations. more
- Posted annual revenues of US$30.7 billion—an all-time record. more
- Opened our first new smelter in two decades in eastern Iceland. more
- Through Alcoa and Alcoa Foundation, invested more than US$49 million in the communities in which we operate worldwide. more
- Held our executive leadership team accountable for integrating diversity into our overall strategy and began tying the results to incentive compensation.
- Completed approximately 25 million hours of construction work in both northern and southern hemispheres with an international workforce of around 12,500 people with only one lost-time injury.
- Ended the year with 80% of our locations having zero lost workdays and 47% with no recordable injuries. more
While we made significant progress and earned prestigious accolades for our sustainability efforts in 2007, my greatest disappointment is that five employees and contractors suffered fatal injuries while working at our facilities.
Loss of life in the workplace is unacceptable, and our goal is to achieve zero fatalities. For this, we need investments, which we do every day; processes in control, which we strive for through our Alcoa Business System processes; and, more than anything, we need the involvement, passion, and commitment to do better from every leader, employee, and contractor.
Alcoa is at its best when we keep open lines of communication to all of our stakeholders, and respond decisively when they raise legitimate concerns. In 2007, we received some intense criticism for the management of our wire harness facilities in Honduras. While many of the accusations were unfounded, we took action on legitimate complaints and made significant changes to overall working conditions and compensation there. I’m very proud of the work our team did to acknowledge the issues, correct them, and underscore to our employees in Honduras that we value them and the community in which we operate.
We are interested in hearing what all of our stakeholders feel about our sustainability performance and reporting efforts—and how we can improve both. I strongly encourage you to send an email to sustainability@alcoa.com with your thoughts.
Alain J. P. Belda
Chairman
|
|
Alain J. P. Belda
Chairman
|
|
|
