KEEPING IT CLEAN
“... an adoption of a new technology is not necessarily always going to be due to risk ”
– Janice Zinck , Director , Green Mining Innovation
stages and then moving them through to demonstration and adoption is one of the major challenges we ’ ve had to overcome ,” says Zinck .
Challenges and success are two sides to the same coin . In the seven years since the GMI was put in place , the initiative has seen a number of considerable successes and achievements .
Collaboration between those various vested interests has been crucial in the development of the initiative , and Zanick recognises this as one of the major successes .
“ It has allowed us to recognise that there needs to be greater collaboration amongst the various stakeholders and that certainly been happening more now and is one of the stronger areas of success .”
Naturally , the major successes for the GMI have been the technologies developed to progress and further this drive and vision of a cleaner legacy .
“ There have been technologies that have looked at the reduction of energy in both underground mining ventilation and comminution . There have been technologies , or applications that have taken barren mining land and utilised waste from other industry such as residual organic waste or municipal waste on the tailings in order to produce a secondary land use - an energy source for production of bio energy .
“ We ’ re talking about taking a barren , sterile operation which in some cases is considered a liability and turning it into a profitable secondary land use .”
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