On behalf of local community groups Western Australia Forest Alliance, the Conservation Council of Western Australia and The Wilderness Society, EDO has reported US mining giant Alcoa to Ad Standards Australia and the Australian Securities & Investments Commission.
Alcoa placed two advertisements in the West Australian newspaper in May and June 2025 with claims around the environmental impacts of its mining operations in the Northern Jarrah Forest in Perth’s Darling Range on Noongar Country.
The claims included that Alcoa’s forest clearing operations had not impacted Perth’s drinking water supplies, that Alcoa undertakes ‘World Class Mining Rehabilitation’ and that Alcoa had rehabilitated 75% of the jarrah forest destroyed by its mining operations.
The community groups alleges Alcoa’s advertising claims are in breach of the Environmental Claims Code of Ad Standards, the Corporations Act 2001 (Cth) and the Australian Securities and Investments Commission Act 2001 (Cth).
The Northern Jarrah Forest in WA is part of the internationally recognised South West Global Biodiversity Hotspot. Eighty per cent of the species living in this biodiversity hotspot are found nowhere else on Earth. It is a refuge for threatened species including the critically endangered marsupial woylie and WA’s iconic black cockatoos, which are locally extinct in some parts of the state.
After 60 years of operation, Alcoa is yet to have any of its rehabilitation signed off as completed to WA Government standards.
An independent review of Alcoa’s rehabilitation concluded that the “severity, duration and scale” of potential environmental impacts of Alcoa’s future mining mean there are real doubts as to “whether these impacts can be realistically and credibly managed through rehabilitation”.1
The joint complaints came as Alcoa proposed to expand its operations across another 11,500ha.
Read the complaints: https://www.edo.org.au/corporate-greenwashing
1 Alcoa Jarrah Forest Rehabilitation – Peer Review, Nov 2023, Stantec – Jasper, Lalor, Banning.
