Displaying items by tag: Environment

Canada: McCinnis Cement's US$1.1bn cement plant, which is under construction in Quebec's Gaspe region, could be cancelled if work is suspended in order to conduct environmental hearings.

Lafarge Canada and two non-profit groups mounted a legal challenge in the summer of 2013 after Quebec's environment minister authorised the project without an environmental assessment hearing. In a legal filing McInnis said that the project is subject to old environmental rules that were in place when it was first proposed more than 20 years ago.
Successive provincial governments have confirmed many times that the project is not subject to current rules that require such hearings.

Egypt: Suez Cement Co has voluntarily agreed to close its Tourah Cement Factory 1 to comply with the local government's policy to reduce the number of facilities that do not meet environmental standards. Suez Cement has instead chosen to invest US$69.9m in environmental mitigation measures at its Tourah Cement Factory 2.

Malaysia: Scientists have discovered a new snail species on a limestone hill known as Kanthan in Malaysia. They have named the species, which is only 2-3mm in diameter, 'Charopa lafargei,' after Lafarge Malaysia, the cement producer that owns the hill.

As Kanthan is the only place that this species has been observed, Charopa lafargei was immediately classed as 'critically endangered' in the IUCN Red List for Endangered Species. This means that its future is effectively in the hands of Lafarge, which purchased the hill to make cement. The scientists decided to name the snail after Lafarge for this reason, although it is not clear if or how the name will affect the future actions of the producer.

"I'm not aware of a species threatened with extinction that has been given the name of the company that can determine whether it goes extinct or survives," said Tony Whitten from Fauna & Flora International.

The new snail is not the only endemic species found on the hill. Kanthan is also home to nine plant species that are on Malaysia's Red List of Endangered Plants. One critically endangered spider, one gecko and two other snails that are also found only on Kanthan.

Canada: Lafarge has completed a US$20m upgrade at its Exshaw cement plant in Alberta, which will reduce the level of emissions generated by its operations. The upgrade is one part of an ongoing expansion at the plant that will ultimately see Lafarge nearly double the plant's output from 1.2Mt/yr to 2.2Mt/yr.The expansion was originally planned in 2008, but was delayed because of the economic downturn.

Now, with Alberta 'booming again,' the timing is right, according to Bob Cooper, Lafarge vice-president for Western Canada Cement. The project will be completed by the summer of 2015.

"We're quite proud of this because we're helping to build Alberta. "We're the only company in Alberta right now, from a cement standpoint, increasing our output," he said. "The market is quite strong. We see a lot of growth going forward in Alberta, the Prairies and even British Columbia."

The environmental benefits of the expansion and side-projects will be 60% lower sulphur dioxide emissions and 40% lower nitrogen oxide emissions.In addition, new dust mitigation and noise abatement equipment has been installed. Lafarge has also installed a new water recycling system, which means that the plant will no longer discharge used water into the Bow River.

The comic book series 'Watchmen' takes its title from the Latin phrase 'Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?' which is translated as 'Who watches the watchmen?' Commonly used today to warn against government, police and judicial corruption, the saying might also apply to those groups who watch big industry such as the Atlas of Environmental Justice.

This initiative is an online database compiled by the Environmental Justice Organisations, Liabilities and Trade (EJOLT) to map environmental conflicts around the world. It's a great tool, it is professionally presented and the project is backed by the European Commission. EJOLT's goals are to give those fighting for environmental justice a voice and to gather data to allow policy change.

As ever the problem with any form of user-content database is who vets the submissions and how much of 'reality' does the data actually represent compared to a more curated project. The mass use of Wikipedia shows that these issues can be overcome to some extent, while user-submitted online hotel and restaurant reviews often suggest otherwise.

All three conflicts registered in the EJ Atlas in southern England, where the Global Cement office is based, offer incomplete or misleading data. The entry for the third runway expansion at Heathrow airport doesn't present the economic benefits of expanding the airport or what the alternatives are. Rightly, the activists will argue that they have significantly smaller resources compared to the big industrial multinationals to fight their corner. Unfortunately this shows in the EJ Atlas and the user-submitted data approach it uses.

At the time of writing only 15 cases are tagged as cement-related out of a total of 1154. This is far fewer cases than you might expect with no mention, for example, of any of the regular environmental scuffles the cement industry faces in North America. The cases it does list are mainly based in Latin America with other clusters in southern Europe and India. Of these, three have been mislabelled and are not even related to the cement industry. The rest are mainly concerned with pollution due to waste incineration and mineral extraction worries. The waste incineration listings have a certain irony about them considering that these cement plants are almost certainly praising themselves for their reduced carbon emissions!

In the online world big companies can sometimes be at a disadvantage to nimble activist campaigns. Journalists from national media outlets can easily find campaigns with a web or social media presence to provide counterpoint for editorial. A good example is the Stop Titan Action Network that formed to fight Titan America's cement plant in Castle Hayne in North Carolina, US.

If the EJ Atlas accrues more attention and/or carries on past its project deadline of 2015 then the problems with the atlas may be fixed as activists log more cases, industry refutes them and the moderators weigh up the arguments in line with the project's aims of environmental justice. As previous online examples have shown, engagement may be better than ignoring these kind of initiatives.

Slovenia: The Lafarge Trbovlje cement plant is among several industrial sites and facilities in Slovenia that have been added to the Global Atlas of Environmental Justice, an interactive online mapping platform detailing environmental conflicts around the world. Its originators seek to highlight incidences of water and land competition as well as air, water and other pollution.

"The Atlas illustrates how ecological conflicts are increasing around the world, driven by material demands fed primarily by the rich and middle class subsections of the global population," said project coordinator Joan Martinez-Alier of the Autonomous University of Barcelona.

UK: Sublime Nature, a new book launched by Cemex UK, became the first in the new Nature Series from global building materials supplier Cemex when it was launched on 18 June 2014. The book has stunning photographs of the natural world and follows the 20-volume Cemex Conservation book series.

Sublime Nature, developed in partnership with National Geographic and Christina Mittermaier, dedicated conservationist and photographer, includes spectacular photographs taken by award-winning photojournalists interspersed with inspiring words from renowned writers and environmentalists. It is aimed at creating awareness of the great beauty of the planet and promoting preservation and conservation.

Jesus Gonzalez, President of Cemex UK, said, "As a leading supplier of cement, aggregates and readymixed concrete, we recognise the need to balance the requirements of the natural world with the demands of communities for building materials to be used in new schools, homes, infrastructure and the built environment. Although recent government announcements have seen a reduction in green objectives, I remain passionate about maintaining sustainability momentum while playing a key role in delivering on our built environment challenges. Our key activities focus on driving down CO2, boosting nature around our operations, developing more sustainable solutions and being more efficient with natural resources."

China: The government of Tianjin in northern China has said that it will not approve any new cement, steel or non-ferrous metals plants in a bid to fight pollution, according to state media. The statement follows a central government plan from 2013 to restrict new manufacturing in key industrial centres.

China has identified the region that includes Beijing, Hebei and Tianjin as one of the key targets of a programme to reduce the emissions of 'heavy' industries including cement, steel and thermal power, according to reports from Reuters. It has promised in policy documents released since 2012 to block the construction of new industrial plants in three major 'low-emission' regions, including Beijing-Hebei-Tianjin, the Yangtze river delta region centring on Shanghai and the Pearl river delta region in southern Guangdong Province. China's environment ministry has said that these regions are responsible for 40% of the country's total cement output despite covering just 8% of the country's total area.

India: Hundreds of farmers who will be affected by a JP Associates cement plant that is under construction in Mangal village, Himachal Pradesh, have staged a protest outside of Arki Sub-Divisional Magistrate (SDM).

The villagers staged their protest over allegations that the cement plant has ruined Mangal village, with JP Associates allegedly having dumped waste in the area. They claim that this has caused massive devastation due to the subsequent run-off from the waste into neighbouring fields.

The Himachal Pradesh high court has passed an order to remove the offending waste and asked the district administration to comply with the order. The villagers have alleged that the district administration failed to force JP Associates to remove the waste that was dumped in the villages. Protesters hold little hope that JP Associates will comply, as successive governments have seldom forced it to in the past.

US: Lawyers for the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and ESSROC are in talks to settle a legal dispute pending before the Environmental Appeals Board (EAB). The EAB had scheduled the case for 7 November 2013 but on 6 November 2013 EAB Judge Leslye Fraser stayed the case until 20 February 2014 to allow time for settlement talks. The order requires ESSROC and EPA's Region V to report to the EAB on the status of negotiations by 9 January 2014.

The case began 8 July 2013 when the ESSROC Cement Corporation petitioned the EAB to review Region V's decision requiring an SSRA at ESSROC's hazardous waste combustor facility in Logansport, IN, during the 2012 renewal of the facility's Resource Conservation and Recovery Act (RCRA) permit. In a 25 September 2013 order, the EAB granted oral argument in the case, and asked that during the proceedings the two sides revisit arguments from industry's past challenge to a 2005 EPA rule setting maximum achievable control technology (MACT) standards under the Clean Air Act for the combustion facilities.