Displaying items by tag: Sustainability

Belgium: Cembureau, the European cement association, has published a position paper outlining its stance European Commission’s plastics strategy. The association wants policymakers to ensure any plastic waste that has a calorific value that can be recovered as a fuel source is not landfilled. At present there are differences in waste management policies across the member states of the European Union.

Other points that Cemburea wants to highlight include: a ban on landfill of recoverable and recyclable waste; recognition that cement plants can treat different waste streams such as plastics and simultaneously recycle them as material in the manufacturing process of cement and recover them as energy; the specific relevance that co-processing offers the unique opportunity of a simultaneous energy and material recovery; and the potential to minimise investment costs in dedicated facilities.

In January 2018, the European Commission published a dedicated Plastics Strategy as part of the Circular Economy package. The strategy indicates that there is currently a low rate of recycling or reuse of plastics with most of it going to landfill or used in incinerators.

India: Ambuja Cement has been ranked seventh in the Construction Material category of the Dow Jones Sustainability Index (DJSJ) 2017. The subsidiary of LafargeHolcim was invited to participate in the DJSI Emerging Markets Index and beat its score from 2016. Each year about 2500 global companies, listed on the stock exchange, belonging to about 59 economic sectors, are invited to participate in the DJSI.