OUR APPROACH TO SERVING THE ENVIRONMENT
Hochschild is committed to producing metals with the smallest environmental footprint. To achieve this, Hochschild is dedicated to protecting the environment through applying best-in-class environmental management practices.
Our Environmental Policy addresses our most material impacts and guides our everyday activities. In alignment with our policy, we are continually seeking ways to strengthen our environmental culture and reduce our footprint.
2024 Highlights
5.58
2024 ECO Score (vs target of 5.5 of 6)
2023: 5.76
66%
Reduction in potable water consumption compared with 2015
2023: 60%
Our Environmental Management
Our Commitments
We adhere to six fundamental environmental commitments:
• The impact on wildlife
• The impact on water quality
• To only discharge authorised effluents
• Seek approval of mine management prior to construction
• Report all environmental incidents to mine management
• Report transparently on our environmental performance
Cultural Transformation
Our Environmental Culture Transformation Plan (ECTP) is critical to our long-term environmental strategy. Our ongoing objective remains to embed an environmentally conscious culture across all departments within the business. This plan ensures that our leadership team understands our environmental culture and leads by example when implementing it.
Every year we launch initiatives focused on our five areas to drive continuous environmental improvement: Leadership, Responsibility, Training, Communication, and Innovation.
Environmental Management System
Our Environmental Management System (EMS) ensures that we have good environmental practices and that we comply with all legal requirements at all mine sites. Our EMS is ISO aligned, and builds upon the knowledge and professional experience of our personnel, resulting in a tailor-made system that works best for the Company.
In 2024, the implementation of the EMS in our mines focused on the enhancement of several core processes at the mine sites. These included environmental risk assessments, leadership, operational control, communication, and training. Additionally, we continue to conduct ‘managerial’ or ‘corporate’ inspections at all sites.
In 2025, we will focus on advancing document management, implementing change management protocols, and improving the measurement and monitoring of environmental performance across our operations.
Environmental focus areas
Climate Change and Energy Use
At Hochschild, we recognise the urgency of addressing climate change and are determined to play our part by continuously reducing our Greenhouse Gas (GHG) emissions. Our aim is to reach net zero GHG emissions by 2050, with an interim ambition to reduce our GHG scope 1 and 2 market-based emissions by 30% against a 2021 baseline. To achieve these targets, our efforts are currently focused on sourcing renewable electricity and transitioning towards low-emissions vehicles as they become readily available, as well as on applying operational changes in existing mines and operations and the use of offset and neutralisation schemes.
As a result of the inclusion of Mara Rosa’s open-pit operation into our carbon footprint in 2024, our scope 1 and 2 market-based emissions have increased by 57.4% in comparison to 2023 and by 48.6% against the 2021 baseline. Because of this, we recognise that we may need to re-base our 2030 ambition in 2025 to account for the impact of Mara Rosa. Even though we had a material increase in our GHG footprint in 2024, our overall GHG emissions intensity continues to be very low (2.60 tCO2e/koz Ag eq; 0.22 tCO2e/oz Au eq) compared to the average of the World Gold Council members.
In 2024, 80% of Hochschild’s energy consumption in Peru was generated from renewable sources and 76% in Argentina. Although no renewable energy was sourced in Brazil in 2024, we expect it to increase with the implementation of the Mara Rosa Green Energy Project, an offtake agreement with a photovoltaic sector specialist in Brazil to implement a solar energy project that will supply renewable energy to the entire Mara Rosa mine site starting in 2026.
Details of our approach to managing climate risks and opportunities can be found in the CFD report included in the 2024 Annual Report. In 2025, we are conducting a financial quantification assessment to better understand our key risks relating to the climate transition.
Water management
Water is a shared, vital and increasingly scarce resource. Mines rely hugely on water to operate, making water recovery, reuse and consumption key focus areas for us. The water supply of local communities is another consideration, as water supplies cannot be affected in any adverse way by the extraction process.
Hochschild has a responsible water management strategy in place to address these factors and use water resources as efficiently as possible. In 2024, 77% of water used in the processing plants was reused and 0.31 m³ of fresh water were used per tonne processed in the processing plant against our 2030 ambition of 0.22 m³/tonne. Our action plan to achieve this ambition includes the installation of a reverse osmosis plant in Inmaculada in 2025 that will increase water recirculation at the mine site. We will also continue to reuse 100% of treated domestic wastewater within the processing plant and seek ways to increase water recirculation and efficiencies in our water circuits, as seen in the “Water recirculation in San Jose” case study.
Biodiversity and ecosystem services
Through managing our operations responsibly, our goal is to preserve this valuable natural asset for future generations. As such, we have policies and commitments to avoid and minimise biodiversity loss through the appropriate management of our mining components. These include detailed baseline studies, which allow us to implement monitoring plans in all our operations. We also regularly monitor flora and fauna in affected areas; at each mining site, we have consultants conducting specialist research, bi-annually, during rainy and dry seasons to monitor and maintain the biodiversity of our surroundings.
When an ecosystem has been disturbed, we contribute to its rehabilitation and restoration in alignment with our mine closure programmes. We also have compensation plans in place to manage impacts on biodiversity that are identified are inevitable. Currently, we have three compensation plans in place. Two of these plans are for Inmaculada and one is for Mara Rosa, as seen in the “Terra Ronca” and “Cotahuasi” case studies.
In 2025, we are developing our corporate biodiversity strategy through a gap assessment and peer benchmarking with a third-party sustainability consultant, aiming to obtain a clear view of our nature data maturity and preparedness to meet TNFD and CDP nature disclosures.
Waste
Hochschild recognises the damage that hazardous and non-hazardous waste can cause if not managed correctly. To minimise the associated risks, we have extensive waste management plans and strategies in place. As a result of these efforts, including the implementation of the ECO Score, domestic waste generation has decreased by 52% since 2015. Additionally, in 2024, we recycled, reused, donated, or composted 57.3% of waste generated across our mine sites in Peru and Argentina. This is an improvement of 25% since 2015 and aligns with our 2030 ambition of repurposing 80% of waste generated. We do not generate any radioactive waste.
Waste rock and tailings
All waste rock and tailings generated as part of mining and processing are managed in accordance with our environmental permits. All mine sites have purpose-made facilities for each waste type. We aim to reuse our tailings and waste rock where possible. In 2024, we reused 16% of our total tailings and 24% of our total waste rock as backfill for the underground mines in Inmaculada and San Jose, and sold 7,772 tonnes of waste rock from Mara Rosa to a rail company, contributing to a circular economy.
Hochschild has 12 Tailing Storage Facilities (TSF). Our most recent Church of England report on TSFs was published in 2025, following the ICMM Global Industry Standard (Peru and Argentina) and Canadian Dam Association (CDA) (Brazil) standards. To ensure the stability of our operational tailings facilities, we conduct external audits every two years. In April and July 2025 we carried out the audit of the facilities in Peru and during 2026 audits will be carried out in Argentina and Brazil. Hochschild also provides induction and training on the policies regulating TSF management for employees.
Air quality
Hochschild's mining units do not generate significant emissions of nitrogen oxides (NOx), sulfur oxides (SOx), volatile organic compounds (VOCs), mercury, ozone-depleting substances, or particulate matter. Therefore, these are not directly monitored. However, air quality is assessed quarterly at all mining units, covering each of these pollutants. All measurements consistently meet the Environmental Quality Standards (ECA) established by national law.
Environmental Management
ECO Score: A Hochschild innovation
To support our environmental commitments, Hochschild designed an innovative programme that allows the distillation of our environmental performance in a single number, expressing otherwise intangible aspects of performance in a way that is universally understood.
The ECO Score is calculated by monitoring performance both at each mining operation and the Group overall using a range of KPIs which reflect, among other things, compliance with discharge limits and zero-tolerance to environmental incidents, regulatory findings, and sound environmental management (relating to water consumption and waste generation).
The corporate goal is set annually by the Board of Directors of the company. Ever since the implementation of the ECO Score, the board has been raising our corporate objective to encourage us to improve our environmental performance year after year.
To incentivise continuous improvement within the Company, we set a higher corporate target at 5.50 for 2024, and we will work towards achieving the highest possible score. Additionally, we established more stringent targets for potable water consumption and domestic waste generation. The target for potable water consumption was reduced to 174 litres/person/day (previous target of 193 litres/person/day) and the target for domestic waste generation was also lowered to 0.9 kilograms/person/day (previous target of 1 kilogram/person/day) in 2023. More importantly, we improved our Environmental Culture inspection checklist criteria and assessment methods by drawing on lessons learned from the previous years. With the implementation of the EMS, we will endeavor to find and address any previously unidentified environmental issues and incorporate them as specific assessment criteria for each mine.
The ECO Score won the 2019 Mines and Money award for Innovation in Sustainability, the 2020 Sustainable Development Award from the Peruvian National Oil and Energy Mining Society and the Sustainability Leadership Award 2023 by Business Intelligence Group. We have also shared the tool in forums, such as the Congress of International Association for Environmental Impact Assessment in 2021, the Technology, Innovation and Sustainability forum in Perumin in 2022 and at the Mine Water Solutions conference in 2022.
The 2024 results have been independently assured by EY Peru following the International Standard on Assurance Engagements (ISAE) 3000 (our official certificate of the 2024 verification can be found here). Details of our 2024 ECO Score performance can be found in here. A detailed explanation of the tool can be found in here.
