SUSTAINABILITY
Victoria Elliott, national commercial manager, Cemex UK, explains what the building materials company is doing to push its sustainability agenda.
BUILDING A BETTER PLANET
C
emex is a global construction materials company that is building a better future through sustainable products and solutions. We continually
push the boundaries of sustainable construction and are constantly improving to be more agile and innovative in our path to net zero. As a result, we are committed to climate action, circularity, and natural resource management, through the robust implementation of our Future in Action climate action programme, which sets the pace for us to become a net-zero CO2 company by 2050. Our Future in Action roadmap is steadily and successfully helping us to stay on track with our commitments, to closely monitor our targets and critical milestones that are aligned with the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals.
The latest changes to the British standard for concrete, BS 8500, (introduced in November 2023) have been hailed as a substantial “leap
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forward” for the industry. In simple terms, BS 8500 now allows the specification of combination/ ternary cements. During the manufacturing process, cement production emits carbon dioxide through the fuel to heat the raw materials, and process emissions from calcining the calcium carbonate. The largest proportion of embodied carbon in concrete is attributable to the cement. The new update to BS 8500 provides options to reduce the mass of clinker and reduce the embodied carbon of concrete by enabling the addition of secondary cementitious materials. This means that the desired performance can still be achieved whilst reducing the levels of embodied carbon. Across industry, extensive testing has been carried out on these new multi-component cements, which has led to the update and the more widespread roll out of lower carbon cements. Now with the potential to use these new cementitious products across all mainstream applications, the associated carbon saving could
add up to an annual saving of 1 million tonnes of carbon dioxide.
While we lower our carbon footprint in our processes, we remain focused on creating demand for products and solutions with sustainable attributes. In September, we became the first company in our industry to provide validated environmental impact disclosure for all core products across our main markets globally. This transparency is an essential step in working alongside our clients as a sustainable construction partner to decarbonise the built environment.
Our core purpose is to build a better and more sustainable future. Cemex is proud to manufacture a wide range of high quality British cements using locally quarried materials and additives, which help to build a better future. We supply cement and fly ash in bulk tankers and bulk bags to customers throughout the UK for ready-mix concrete and precast concrete products. We also offer a wide range of bagged cement and cementitious products which
A supplement to builders merchants journal June 2024
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