APPLE, Tiffany & Co and Rio Tinto have thrown their weight behind a public benefit restoration and re-mining company that aims to extract value from mine waste and rehabilitate the land as it does so.

Regeneration Enterprises is the brainchild of Stephen D'Esposito.

He had been looking for funding model for his non-governmental organisation Resolve, which sets out to design innovative, sustainable solutions to society's toughest challenges.

From those efforts grew Salmon Gold, which set out to clean up streams in Alaska and Yukon that had been tainted by gold mining tailings.

D'Esposito told Australia's Mining Monthly at the World Mining Congress that Salmon Gold started out re-mining the tailings, getting the gold and restoring the stream habitat.

"We have miners working with forest managers, governments and environmental stakeholders," he said. "Salmon Gold is like a peace treaty between mining and salmon habitat."

While Salmon Gold's aims are noble there is a clever commercial twist to it. It turns out companies like the idea of using materials that have been created sustainably and whose production helped improve the environment.

"In the late 1990s and early 2000s, I started doing work around mining accountability and looking at the supply chain," D'Esposito said. "I was able to build a relationship with the chief executive of Tiffany.

"I started to play a central role in a lot of mining standards and through that I got to know the mining industry.

"I also worked in responsible sourcing strategy and ended up with this idea for Salmon Gold and pitched it to Apple and Tiffany and they loved it."

They agreed to source gold from miners that committed to restoring and improving the land they were operating on.

Salmon Gold spawned Regeneration, which is taking the concept into other metals and other jurisdictions.

Resolve owns 75% of Regeneration.

Apple, Rio Tinto and jewellery maker Mejuri have agreed to partner with Regeneration.

"Regeneration gets the end users to fund its eco-projects," D'Esposito said. "It becomes part of their scope three."

Blessed are the re-miners D'Esposito said there were other re-miners out there, pointing to New Century Resources, which set out to re-mine the tailings at the old Thalanga zinc mine in Northern Queensland.

New Century was taken over by Sibanye Stillwater in May. D'Esposito said the New Century approach was a pure commercial play while Regeneration was set up as a public benefit company.

He has no plans to move into purely commercial operations until the business model is proven.

There is more to Regeneration's plans than just re-mining tailings though. While the metals pulled from the tailings could possibly go for a premium due to the green credentials attached to them, D'Esposito believes there is another revenue stream to be had.

He believes Regeneration could be paid to rehabilitate old legacy sites as well.

D'Esposito admitted the approach would possibly work better in North America where there were government mechanisms already in place.

"In the US the government gets third parties to create rehabilitation banks," he said. Combining this with the metals recovery and the potential green premiums for that metal and a potent business model starts to form.

A part of the mix would be ensuring Regeneration did not get stuck with any contingent liabilities attaching to legacy sites.

Coming to Australia

Regeneration signed a memorandum of understanding with Australian not-for-profit enviroMETS on June 29 to get enviroMETS to scout for legacy mine sites in Queensland.

"We're planning to set up Regeneration Australia," D'Esposito said.

The Regeneration approach to tailings reprocessing and site rehabilitation are technology agnostic.

"We don't bring a technology to the table," D'Esposito said. "We're finding technology innovators are having a hard time getting to site to test their technologies. We're trying to bridge that gap.

"We're funding a research project for bauxite residue. The technology being applied is something the owner didn't think would be applied to red mud.

"The other thing that will happen is companies will come to us. Rio Tinto is one." D'Esposito said one way Regeneration was getting a start was through its ability to potentially lower the cost of rehabilitation.

"That's the part of the model that's giving us early traction," he said.

 Note: Article content extracted from Mining Magazine. Noel Dyson