Sustainability Matters 2019

24 May 2019

The precast concrete sector continues to make significant progress across most key performance indicator targets and work has started on new targets post-2020 contributing to the objective of reaching Net Zero Carbon by 2050.

British Precast has published the 2019 edition of Sustainability Matters and significant progress is being made towards the sectors 2020 targets. In key areas such as factory CO₂ emissions, members have already met both the Charter 2020 target and the Green Construction Board’s Carbon Route Map target. This also means that the membership has fulfilled the Infrastructure Carbon Review pledge of a 20% reduction in carbon emissions. Part of a long-term trend, factory emissions per tonne of precast concrete continued to fall in 2018, reaching 10kg CO₂/t compared to 19.9 kg CO₂/t in 2010.

One of the many benefits of precast concrete is its production in a factory setting. This allows 90% of precast concrete produced by the membership to be covered by ISO9001 quality management and ISO14001 environmental management systems. These management systems do not only indicate commitment to address environmental aspects and impacts but also a willingness to embrace new technologies and innovation as part of continuous improvement.

UK concrete is a sustainable and locally sourced product. Over three quarters of precast production is certified under BES6001 as responsibly sourced and over 20% of the aggregates consumed are from recycled or secondary sources. Good resource and waste management practices and the sectors resource efficiency action plan (REAP) mean that only 31.98 kg of waste was generated in 2018, of which less than 1% was disposed to landfill and over 50% is recycled on site.

The annual sustainability matters KPI data collection covers over 100 UK production sites and over 14 million tonnes of precast concrete. This represents two thirds of precast concrete products manufactured in the UK and a workforce of 7,428 full time employees.

For a more detailed picture of up to date sustainability statistics in the precast concrete sector, the Sustainability Matters 2019 publication is available to download on the British Precast website: https://www.britishprecast.org/Publications.aspx