BHP Shareholders for Social Responsibility

BHP Billiton is a major Australian company, an important employer, and significant to our export trade.

As BHP Billiton shareholders we are anxious for the financial health of our Company, our share price, our dividends, and our franking credits.
We are users of products manufactured from the raw materials mined by our Company.

We are also anxious for BHP's long term viability, and the security of its employees.

We would like to see board and management share in the gains, and the pains, of shareholders, employees, other stakeholders and our environment.

Global Warming has introduced new factors affecting viability - environmental, social, technical and political.
We need to take effective and immediate action, developing planned transitions into a less carbon dependent and more resource frugal society.

We have concerns regarding:

the effects of mining on people, creatures and plants nearby and downstream.
loss of quality and quantity of water in catchments as a result of mining.
treatment of employees who are driven to become 'whistle-blowers'.
workplace and local health and safety as affected by production processes.
the nature and quantity of waste material, solid, liquid and gas, created by industrial processes.
the amount of used material we create, the increasing difficulty of recycling and dumping it.
the extreme hazards resulting from Uranium sales: in an unstable world, to competing and fearful regimes, of military applications and terrorist potential, of the radioactive legacy it leaves for thousands of generations to come.
Climate Change resulting from ever increasing fossil fuel usage.
declining output from major oil fields ("Peak Oil") together with increased competition for that oil.

The group formed in 1994 as a result of concerns regarding the environmental damage done in Papua New Guinea by BHP's Ok Tedi copper mine.
This led on to some wider concerns. A brief history of issues taken up by the group, please click here

For this year's AGM we are seeking support for the following:- Issues for 2009, please click here

For more information on specific problems please click here

To contact us please click here

last updated 12/9/2009