GM has joined the Initiative for Responsible Mining Assurance (Irma) in an effort to make the supply chain supporting its electric vehicle (EV) production more sustainable. 

Membership of Irma brings with it third-party assessments of mining practices while advancing a range of issues including health and safety, waste management, and compliance with local and international laws.

The Irma certification builds GM’s established standards for sustainability with its suppliers. In recent months GM has introduced more measures to make its EV supply chain more sustainable, including a reduction in the use of cobalt, collaboration with Controlled Thermal Resources (CTR), through which GM is able to extract local, low-cost lithium more sustainably, and a supplier agreement with Wolfspeed that will enable GM to install more efficient EV propulsion through weight and space saving using silicon carbide in its batteries.