PT Vale Indonesia Tbk honoured at ESGBusiness Awards 2025 for sustainability leadership
The company strengthens its role in sustainable mining by rehabilitating ultrabasic forests and reducing household waste dependence on landfills.
PT Vale Indonesia Tbk (PT Vale) received the Biodiversity Conservation Award - Indonesia and the Waste Management Award - Indonesia at the ESGBusiness Awards 2025. The recognition affirms the company’s commitment to integrating responsible environmental management into its nickel mining operations in Sulawesi.
PT Vale’s biodiversity conservation initiative has focused on safeguarding ultrabasic ecosystems, which are home to plant species adapted to low-nutrient soils rich in heavy metals. Since 2003, the company has run a conservation and rehabilitation programme that includes the establishment of arboreta such as Taman Kehati Sawerigading Wallacea and the Himalaya Arboretum on post-mining land.
More than two million local, endemic, and protected plants have been cultivated. As of July 2024, PT Vale has reforested 3,817 hectares of post-mining areas, introducing over 67 species and improving biodiversity indices to a range of 2.06 to 2.39. These efforts have restored habitats for wildlife, including the knobbed hornbill, moor macaque, and various butterfly species.
PT Vale also received recognition for its waste management programme, EMBERS Sorowako (Enhanced Management of Bio-waste for Environmentally Resilient Solutions). The initiative introduces a distributed bucket system for household-level waste separation, enabling organic waste to be processed in biodigesters with a capacity of 100 kilograms per day. This process generates methane gas as a substitute for liquefied petroleum gas (LPG) and produces approximately 23,760 litres of liquid fertiliser annually. To date, the programme has diverted 26.79 tonnes of organic waste from landfills each year and reduced community LPG consumption by 876 kilograms annually.
The company has worked with universities, government institutions, and local communities to ensure that both conservation and waste reduction strategies are supported by research and local participation.
The ESGBusiness Awards celebrates companies that are leading the way in building a sustainable future. The awards programme honours businesses that demonstrate outstanding commitment and achievement in environmental, social, and governance (ESG) practices.
The ESGBusiness Awards is presented by ESGBusiness. To view the full list of winners, click here. If you want to join the 2026 awards programme and be acclaimed for your company's outstanding commitment and achievement in environmental, social, and governance (ESG) practices, please contact Julie Anne Nuñez-Difuntorum at [email protected].
