Introduction to ResponsibleSteel
ResponsibleSteel is a global, not-for-profit organisation created to maximise steel’s contribution to a sustainable world. The initiative brings together steelmakers, buyers, NGOs, unions, and other actors in a multi-stakeholder platform, fostering cooperation across the entire value chain.
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Steel is the world’s largest materials industry. It’s critical to society and the renewable energy transition. But the industry accounts for around 10% of global energy emissions and comes with numerous issues relating to labour, biodiversity, water management, local communities, pollution, and more. We have the opportunity to do things differently.
ResponsibleSteel is a global, not-for-profit organisation created to maximise steel’s contribution to a sustainable world. Working collaboratively with our members, we have developed an independent standards and certification programme for steel via a process that uses the ISEAL Codes of Good Practice as a reference. Together, we are setting the global standard for socially and environmentally responsible net-zero steel.
Our membership
Building a responsible steel industry requires cooperation and mutual commitment between companies across the steel value chain, civil society, and other stakeholders. We provide a forum for businesses and social and environmental organisations to work together, creating value that neither group can create on its own.
Our International Standard
The ResponsibleSteel International Production Standard contains 13 Principles covering key environmental, social and governance issues identified and agreed upon by our members for the responsible production of steel. By ensuring that ResponsibleSteel is the most trusted standard for steel, we offer steelmakers a sustainability roadmap that customers, communities, investors, and workers can all get behind. We combine all the complexities of good social and environmental performance in one indicator: certification.
Certification against the Production Standard covers the full range of sustainability issues from biodiversity and decarbonisation to labour rights. ResponsibleSteel’s certification scheme is designed to drive progress across the industry, beginning with Core Site Certification and then working through four Progress Levels of Certified Steel, completing the journey with Progress Level 4: near-zero steel with the highest standards for traceability.
