SCG’s Green Mining A Mining Model For Sustainable Coexistence of Community and Environment 

Green Mining is SCG’s mining approach under the philosophy of “Where there is a plant, there is a green forest.” The mining practices incorporate SCG’s sustainable development guidelines and circular economy into operational and environmental management in alignment with legal requirements and international practices to preserve natural resources and minimize adverse environmental impacts. 

Environmentally Friendly Quarry Design 

SCG has developed innovative quarry design called “Semi-Open Cut” method that combines the mining techniques of “Open Cut” and “Open Pit” by leaving quarry boundary line as green wall or buffer zone around the quarry. The method is to maintain the visual aesthetic of the natural landscape and healthy forest ecosystem functions. 

Mining process 

SCG has taken environmental and safety issues into consideration in all stages of the operations to establish appropriate operational practices for business, environment, and society. The SCG mining stages are as follows: 

1. Mine Planning.  Implement mining engineering information technology to develop a plan for the long-term and short-term mining that utilizes natural resources in the most efficient manner. 

2. Blasting. Improve mining pattern and technique to reduce adverse impacts, particularly noise and vibration, by modifying blasting patterns in line with the geological structure to launch the most efficient blasting with the lowest environmental impacts possible.  The Company communicates with surrounding communities of the blasting schedules and send staff to observe impacts occurred in the community each time. 

3. Crushing. Use technology to prevent and solve dust pollution with the closed crushing system in all operational stages ranging from classifying, crushing, conveying, loading to stockpiling. Bag Filter is installed to prevent dust particles from spreading into the environment. 

4. Hauling. Design the haul road in the quarry to minimize dust efficiently. The automated water spray system and the water trucks are in place to prevent dust blow-off during transport. The speed limit of a vehicle in the quarry is not over than 30 kilometers/hour. 

In addition, the mining operations utilize water from rainwater reserve with no leveraging of external water sources.  The stored rainwater is used for haul road watering, water spraying, and rehabilitation area watering. The products from the quarry activities can also be further optimized such as limestone used in clinker production, limestone utilized in mixing in cement grinding process and limestone for construction stone production. 

Mining Rehabilitation and Biodiversity Conservation 

SCG strives to become a role model for conducting business operations along with biodiversity conservation on top of providing knowledge for other agencies and involving the society as part of biodiversity conservation efforts. The proceedings are as follows: 

1. Establish mine rehabilitation framework by implementing forest restoration with silviculture, framework species method combined with mining engineering technology. 

2. Determine the biodiversity conservation plan which divided into 3 phases: 

• Phase 1: Launch survey and conduct specific characteristics biodiversity baseline data in the area as key information to set the framework. 
• Phase 2: Launch an in-depth study of local plants to include details for operational planning and local seedlings preparation for mine rehabilitation on top of setting key indicators to measure project outcome. 
• Phase 3: Study relationships among community, plant species and wildlife to extract information for mining rehabilitation framework to achieve forest ecosystem recovery throughout the food chain (Biodiversity Management Plan). 
• Conduct Quarry Rehabilitation Report. The Quarry Rehabilitation Committee of SCG has been active in mine rehabilitation efforts for a substantial time. The committee conducted research studies and experimented several techniques as well as collaborating with academic organizations, including WWF, Kasetsart University’s  Forestry Faculty, Forest Restoration Research Unit of Chiang Mai University’s Science Faculty, Prince of Songkla University’s Science Faculty, and Biodiversity-Based Economy Development Office (Public Organization), to systematically recover ecosystem and biodiversity. The committee extracted knowledge and lesson learnt in a report named “Quarry Rehabilitation” with the objective to share pivotal findings and knowledge to interested agencies and individuals. 

Download the “Quarry Rehabilitation” report here for more information