Displaying items by tag: Environment

Switzerland: LafargeHolcim has revealed a Euro145m investment plan to reduce its CO2 emissions in Europe by 3Mt/yr, equivalent to 15% of its carbon footprint, by 2022. The investment will target advanced equipment and technology to increase the use of low-carbon fuels and materials.

Morocco: Morocco’s second largest cement plant in Safi, HeidelbergCement’s largest in the country, is to receive an adjacent algae pond. Environmental innovator Omega Green has estimated the pond’s rate of carbon dioxide removal at 80-100t/yr. The algae can be sold on to food, cosmetics, and animal feed producers.

Guatemala: Cementos Progreso has received the National Award for Cleaner Production and the Sello Ambiental award in recognition of meeting environmental guidelines and having effective environmental management systems. The company has implemented preventative, proactive and inclusive systems across all of its operations and business units. This includes limestone and aggregate quarries, aggregate crushing, premixed concrete production, bag factories and the Estadio Cementos Progreso multi-sports stadium.

Bangladesh: Shahab Uddin, the Minister for Environment, Forest and Climate Change, says that five cement plants near the Sundarbans mangrove forest region have been granted environmental clearance certification. The plants are Meghna Cement Mills, Bashundhara Cement Mills, Mongla Cement Mills, Dubai-Bangla Cement Mills and Holcim (Bangladesh), according to the New Nation newspaper. Uddin said that the units were all at least 6km away from the Sundarbans reserved forest area and that the Department of Environment was monitoring their emissions on a regular basis. In 1995 the government declared a 10km area around the Sundarbans Reserve Forest as a ‘critical’ ecological zone.

Paraguay: Cartes Group has been fined US$79,500 for cutting down trees near San Lazaro, Concepción where it is planning to build a new cement plant. It will also have to pay US$1.8m towards gaining environmental certificates for the project, according to the ABC Color newspaper. Cartes Group purchased Calera Risso, the company planning to build the new unit, in late 2018.

Environmental studies at the site have also noted caves that should be protected including the Risso Cavern, where a fossil of a giant sloth was found in 2012. The Paraguayan Federation of Speleology has asked the the Ministry of Environmetnal and Sustainablity (MADES) to safeguard the site that also holds microfossils dating back 550m years.

The Cementos Concepción plant project was announced in early 2019. It intends to build a 1Mt/yr cement plant by 2021 with an investment of US$180m.

Lebanon: Residents of Ain Dara near Aley have protested at the Industry Ministry against the decision to grant a licence to the Al Arz Cement plant project. The protestors object on environmental grounds, according to the Daily Star newspaper. In a statement the ministry said that the plant would conform to environmental regulations. The project was launched in 2017 by entrepreneur Pierre Fattoush.

Sri Lanka: Insee Group has signed a memorandum of understanding with the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) to protect limestone hills in the company’s quarrying sites in Sri Lanka, Cambodia, Thailand and Vietnam.
The ultimate goal of the partnership is to turn the limestone quarrying sites into forests through rehabilitation programmes.

In Sri Lanka, the agreement is intended to strengthen Insee Cement’s capacity to rescue and release threatened wildlife, prepare mine restoration guidelines and carry out annual ecological monitoring of restored mines in Insee Cement’s quarry sites in Aruwakkalu and Puttalam.

“In Sri Lanka we have worked with IUCN since 2007 to ensure conservation in quarry sites, as the partnership is focused on delivering practical solutions which protect Sri Lankan ecosystem. We take pride in meeting the expectations of our local stakeholders and join hands with our group and OpCo’s on the dedicated commitment to enhance forestry and quarry management in Asia,” said Nandana Ekanayak, the chief executive officer (CEO) of Insee Cement.

Fiji: The Department of Environment has issued a Stop Work Notice to Pacific Cement’s Lami plant due to complaints about dust emissions. The notice was issued following a visit by Sandeep Singh, the Director of Environment, to the unit, according to the Fiji Sun newspaper. The work orders are normally temporary to give industries time to implement mitigation measures.

Nouzab Fareed, the chief executive officer (CEO) of Pacific Cement’s parent company Fijian Holdings, acknowledged that the plant emitted dust ‘sometimes.’ However, he pointed out that the site imports over 0.1Mt/yr of clinker and that this comes from another plant.

Chief executives from over 30 companies attended the Global Cement and Concrete Association (GCCA) inaugural event last week in London. Its first president Albert Manifold, the chief executive officer (CEO) of CRH, laid out the line by saying that, “For the first time we have a global advocacy body.” He followed this up by emphasising that ‘our product’ is the most used man-made product in the world. Just like the Cement Sustainability Initiative (CSI), the body the GCCA is partly-replacing, it is a CEO-led organisation. The target is very much about giving a global voice to the cement and concrete industries and the vertically integrated companies that produce these products.

Along with the head of CRH, the leaders of LafargeHolcim, HeidelbergCement, CNBM, Votorantim, Buzzi Unicem and Eurocement, amongst others, were all on the attendance list too. That kind of representation gave the event a charged air and a real sense of intent. At present the association says it represents 35% of global cement production and its aim is to reach 50%. That compares to the 30% base that the CSI had.

Representatives from some major cement associations were also present, including Europe’s Cembureau, the Federación Interamericana del Cemento (FICEM), the Canadian Cement Association and the VDZ. The only thing stopping the US Portland Cement Association being there was reportedly the Thanksgiving holiday. Although not comprehensive, that kind of representation suggests serious interest from the regional cement associations. The word from the GCCA CEO Benjamin Sporton was that the GCCA is here to provide a global level of coordination to the advocacy and sustainability side of the industry dealing with global organisations like the United Nations (UN), development banks, other associations and non-government organisations (NGOs).

How this will work in practice has yet to be seen, but at the very least, the GCCA can take over the work of the CSI and run with it. The word from the attendees we spoke to was uniformly positive for the association. It was seen as a long-overdue move to finally give the industry some sort of uniform voice at a global scale. In this sense it is catching up with similar bodies in industries like wood and steel. One benefit from moving from the CSI to a full advocacy organisation is that the industry can actually talk about the good things it does rather than being limited to sustainability and environmental data reporting. It seems like a small change in focus but it’s a big shift in mind-set.

A cynic might suggest that the exercise is one of a dirty industry trying to wrest the Overton window, or window of public discourse, back from legislators facing mounting environmental pressure. The latest UN Emissions Gap Report for 2018, for example, reported this week that CO₂ emissions rose in 2017 after four consecutive years of decline. This is the latest environmental report in a long line pointing out bad news. Yet, the GCCA’s unwritten mantra, that concrete improves lives, is sound. Somebody or something needs to link it all up. That somebody might just be the GCCA.

A review of the inaugural annual general meeting and symposium of the GCCA will be published in a forthcoming issue of Global Cement Magazine.

Nigeria: The Federal Government says it is investigating complaints from residents at Akinbo village near to the quarry of Lafarge Africa’s Ewekoro cement plant in Ogun State. Local residents have complained about breeches of local environmental legislation at the site, according to the Vanguard newspaper. Adegboyega Salam, the Director of Mines Environmental Compliance Department from the Federal Ministry of Mines and Steel Development, said that the issue was related to relocation of the community. He added that he had asked Lafarge Africa for comment. The dispute relates to an agreement between the cement producer and the local community in 2012.