A daunting climate crisis, but every business can take steps forward
A daunting climate crisis, but every business can take steps forward
By Elissa Turnbull, product marketing manager, Saint-Gobain Weber
Elissa Turnbull
As world leaders gathered in Azerbaijan for the Cop29 climate conference, the warning klaxon was sounding ever louder, urging us to all do more to cut carbon emissions.
2024 is on track to be the warmest year on record after an extended streak of exceptionally high monthly global mean temperatures, the World Meteorological Organisation (WMO) has announced.
The need to find solutions to our overheating planet may be a daunting challenge but that doesn’t mean businesses should think their efforts too small to matter.
Collectively, the construction sector has a responsibility to look for ways to find improvements. This means exploring alternative supply chain routes, examining ours and our suppliers’ carbon emissions, and finding opportunities to manufacture products that contain more sustainable materials.
At Saint-Gobain Weber, our target is to reach net zero by 2050 with a 20% reduction in CO2 emissions by 2030. We know that to achieve this, we must constantly innovate to find sustainable alternatives to carbon intensive materials such as cement. This is true across all of our product categories, including renders, external wall insulation, technical mortars, flooring and tile fixing solutions.
After water, concrete is the most widely used substance on Earth, comprised of cement, water and aggregates. If the cement industry were a country, it would be the third largest carbon dioxide emitter in the world with up to 2.8bn tonnes, surpassed only by China and the US.
Industries that use cement must find technological advances that move us beyond current practice and give alternative options to ground granulated blast-furnace slag (GBBS) – the preferred lower carbon alternative to cement that is a finite resource.
Cutting the carbon content of products and reducing the reliance on using traditional cement is vital. Now, many Weber products are using cement replacement technologies to achieve this.
Our new moncouche render, for example, has a 22% reduction in carbon emissions from fossil fuels and 10% overall compared with our current product. In fact, our three monocouche renders – weberpral E, M and D – are the only ones in the market to have environmental product declarations (EPD).
Thankfully we are not alone in introducing change – innovation is also going on around the world in this field. Part of this is down to construction product manufacturers considering the circular economy in design.
Circular economy in innovation
UK Green Building Council (UKGBC) statistics show that 60% of material use and waste generation in the UK comes from construction, demolition and excavation. One of the ways to reduce this impact is by considering principles of the circular economy when developing construction products.
Here, the focus is on reusing, recycling or minimising waste and designing for longevity, as well as exploring ways to cut the energy intensity during manufacture.
Construction product innovation with the circular economy in mind requires us to look at ways of minimising use of natural resources. We must also reduce the amount of waste produced either as a byproduct of manufacture or during construction. Another principle is to explore ways to reuse materials, putting them back into use in different ways.
At Weber, recycling waste products has been a lightbulb moment in bringing in principles of the circular economy to our business, while also cutting our carbon emissions and water usage.
By doing so, we cut down the use of raw materials traditionally associated with cement production and use waste material from other manufacturing processes. We also repurpose the material, breathing new life into it in the form of a more environmentally friendly monocouche render – without compromising on any of the user experience installers have become accustomed to in previous products.
On the wider, global front, there are innovations being reported all the time, such as 3D-printed concrete structures, bio-concrete with living organisms such as algae that absorb CO2, and concrete with titanium dioxide that reacts with sunlight to break down pollutants in the atmosphere.
But innovative new ideas are just one leg of the net zero journey.
Skills and training
At Weber, we have taken a huge step by continuing to invest in upskilling our staff to better understand the implications of, and solutions to, the climate crisis.
Our team of Sustainability Champions from across the business help nudge us forward on our journey to net zero. Individuals within the team have been trained to deliver Climate Fresk workshops to drive awareness and promote behaviour change.
Another important facet of this work is our gold level membership of the Supply Chain Sustainability School. Launched in 2012, it is an award-winning free virtual learning platform around sustainability, which aims to upskill those working within or aspiring to work within, the built environment sector.
This is based on three central principles:
Carbon and Climate: Increasing energy efficiency and use of renewable energies, as well as reducing embodied carbon emissions.
Resources and Circularity: Reducing use of non-renewable resources, reducing our freshwater consumption, increasing product lifetime and use rate, and reducing the amount of non-recovered construction and demolition waste.
Health and Wellbeing: Looking to develop products that enrich lives and support good health and wellbeing, focusing on reducing business travel by adopting new ways of working and promoting mental health and wellbeing.
We’re not alone at Saint-Gobain Weber in focusing heavily on our sustainability journey, but we’re extremely proud of the progress we have made so far, whether sourcing raw materials locally to reduce carbon footprint or introducing fully electric or hybrid company cars.
We are also building our portfolio of EPDs across our product ranges in a bid to quantify and reduce carbon emissions, water usage and material waste.
Not everyone can grow up to be a world leader called to give their guidance at a COP29 climate summit, but everyone – from whatever industry or sector – can do their bit.
